New York advocates are urging Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature to support bills to reform the criminal justice system.
As the year winds down and preparations are underway for the upcoming state legislative session that begins in January, advocates are packing the New York State Capitol in Albany to draw attention to issues they want tackled in the new year.
On Monday, advocates who were formerly incarcerated or affected by family members who are behind bars called for sentencing reform.
Lukee Forbes, who was sentenced in connection with a violent assault in Albany when he was 15, was released when he was 24. He says he and other activists are not asking the state to be "soft on crime."
“We're asking for judges to look at individuals, to not see a case as if people are not involved, because people are involved,” Forbes said.
The coalition of advocates is seeking passage of three bills.
The Second Look Act allows those behind bars who were sentenced to a decade or more to have their sentences reviewed.
The Earned Time Act allows sentences to be shortened through good time and merit time programs.
The Marvin Mayfield Act would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences.
Forbes says he understands the criminal justice system personally. He says he fell into the wrong crowd as his mother was dying of AIDS when he was young.
“When I ended up hanging around older peers who committed assault and robbery that they testified that I did not hit the victim. Did the courts look at me as a child? No, they looked at me as a charge, and I blew trial, and I was ridiculed. I was made fun of by the judge,” Forbes said.
Jaime Bailey-Warren, whose husband Steven has been incarcerated for two decades on second-degree murder and robbery charges, says "defiant hope" keeps her going.
“Defiant hope challenges us to envision a system where justice is truly just, where rehabilitation is prioritized over punishment, where sentencing is fair, where individuals are given second chances, and where the cycle of incarceration is broken by addressing the root causes of crime, such as poverty, education gaps and mental health issues,” Bailey-Warren said.
Bailey-Warren, a special education teacher at Long Lake Central School District, shared some of a letter from her husband sharing his view he had been wrongfully convicted.
“I've lost time, time that I will not get back under any circumstance. Every day has been a struggle, mentally as well as physically and spiritually. Our judicial system seems to only perpetuate the injustices we face and hand down excessive prison sentences that destroy the family structure and take individuals away from their communities,” Bailey-Warren said.
Melanie Trimble, Director of the Capital Region Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says criminal justice reform would be racial justice.
She noted disproportionate impacts of strict sentencing on minorities.
“New York's half century long scourge of mass incarceration and unduly harsh sentences are policy choices that continue to ravage entire communities. The safest communities are the ones with the most resources, not the highest jail populations,” Trimble said.
Terel Overton, a member of the Albany-based Center for Community Alternatives, was paroled earlier this year after more than 20 years behind bars for second-degree murder, a charge for which he says he was wrongfully convicted.
Overton calls himself an example of the school-to-prison pipeline.
“I was 18 years old when I first stepped foot in Sing-Sing, when I came home, I was 40 years old. That's two decades of the most formative, formidable years of my life spent in a cage. During those years I grew up, I changed. I went from being a gang member to a mentor, from someone who people feared to someone they trusted,” Overton said.
Darryl Johnson, of the Albany-based Center for Law and Justice, served a decade-long sentence for dealing drugs in New York City.
While he acknowledges dealing was wrong, he believes the sentence he received was based more on his ZIP code than any actual harm done.
“It was not a war on drugs. It was a war on us. That's right. 18 of us from 117th Street ended up incarcerated. I spent years locked up in Auburn, Dannemora, Groveland,” Johnson said.
All three bills are currently idling in committee.
A spokesperson for Governor Hochul said the Democrat will review the legislation should it pass both houses of the legislature.
