Why a debate over NY’s criminal justice system is heating up

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Why a debate over NY’s criminal justice system is heating up

On Thursday, dozens of law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and crime-fighting advocates shivered in the Albany cold, urging state lawmakers to reconsider New York’s laws to end cash bail, revise investigative rules and raise the age of imprisonment to 21 years.

Around the same time, progressive Democratic lawmakers and lawyers in the virtual world of Zoom were demanding approval of a package of measures they believed would make the judicial system in New York fairer, especially for people of color and immigrants.

The Dueling press conferences were a sign that the heated debate over the direction of New York’s criminal justice system will return again in 2022, while all state offices are up for election.

And it comes after several years of gains from reformers advocating an end to cash bail on many criminal charges, legalizing cannabis, and closing prisons across the state in the face of a declining population.

But law enforcement and crime-fighting advocates, including parents of murdered children, believe the changes have gone too far in one direction.

“The same courage that we had to have on this very difficult issue, we must have the same courage to see that there is room for improvement and come back to the table and make the appropriate adjustments,” said the police chief from Syracuse, Kenton Buckner.

New York cash bail laws have been at the center of the debate as police and prosecutors are demanding that judges have more leeway to hold a defendant in custody if they are seen as a threat to the community.

Advocates of cashless bail have argued that the measures balance the criminal justice system against poorer defendants who cannot afford the money to be released from local prisons, and that giving judges more powers maintains a discriminatory system.

Law enforcement agencies have blamed the bail laws for the sharp rise in violent crime in recent months, although this has not been conclusively proven. A review by the State Department of Criminal Justice Services is underway on the matter.

Alexander Horwitz, executive director of New Yorkers United for Justice, described the connection as an outright lie by opponents of cashless bail. Horwitz wants politics to focus on bringing people who have been imprisoned back into the community. The fight against cashless bail laws, he argues, makes New York less secure.

“They make New Yorkers safer because they reduce the pressure on the criminal justice system and make people’s lives more continuous during this time before the trial,” Horwitz said. “All of these things make the system fairer. You make the system fairer, you make our state safer. Here, too, we have the data to prove it. ”

But law enforcement officials like Albany County’s District Attorney David Soares believe changes are needed to give judges more power – and that lawyers on the other side of the problem are out of touch with communities’ security needs.

“The people who keep making these reforms go on can share in the virtue, but trust me when I say they don’t share the burden,” he said.

Still, some Democrats in the state legislature will push for more changes. Lawyers on Thursday unveiled the Justice 2022 Roadmap, which includes proposals to reduce the number of people in prisons, prisons and detention centers for immigrants.

One of the measures under consideration, but stalled in the last year, would be the erasure of the criminal records of more than 2 million people.

“We know this conviction is life imprisonment for too many,” said MEP Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas. “It lives in a state of eternal punishment.”

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/jamestown/ny-state-of-politics/2021/12/09/why-a-debate-over-new-york-s-criminal-justice-system-is-heating-up