The Legal Aid Society, along with the Brooklyn Defender Services and other city public defenders offices released their 2024 New York state legislative priorities.
The organizations are calling on Albany to pass critical criminal justice reforms. The measures include continued funding for public defender offices statewide, passage off HESC/DALF expansion legislation to increase student loan assistance for lawyers serving the public interest and the Treatment Not Jail Act, which would expand pre-trial diversion for people with mental health or substance use concerns.
The offices also called on Albany to cease any further dangerous rollbacks to bail laws that have contributed to an increased pre-trial detention population.
“The criminal legal system inflicts a myriad of harms on New Yorkers from the trauma of arrest and incarceration to lasting barriers to housing, education and employment that punish people throughout their lives,” said Lisa Schreibersdorf, Executive Director of Brooklyn Defender Services. “While Albany has made progress to address these harms, much more must be done — from breaking down these barriers for young people with the Youth Justice & Opportunities Act to ending mandatory minimum sentencing and predatory court fees."
Additional legislative priorities include the Second Look Act which allows judges to review and reconsider excessive sentences, the Jury of Our Peers Act to repeal New York’s lifetime categorical ban on people with felony convictions from serving on juries, the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act to ensure that wrongfully convicted New Yorkers have a pathway to exoneration, the #Right2RemainSilent legislation to ensure that all youth under the age of 18 have access to an attorney prior to a police interrogation, the No Slavery in NY Act to abolish the prison labor exception that allows for modern-day slavery for people incarcerated in New York’s prisons and jails, the Youth Justice & Opportunities Act to expand alternatives to incarceration and record sealing for adolescents and young adults and an increase in funding for community-based treatment programs and violence intervention programs to enhance community safety.
