AS BUDGET HEARINGS CONTINUE, FORMERLY INCARCERATED ADVOCATES, IMPACTED FAMILIES, AND ALLIES DEMAND DIVESTMENT FROM CORRECTIONS AND REINVESTMENT IN COMMUNITIES
Ahead of the preliminary budget hearing of the City Council Committee on Criminal Justice, survivors of Rikers, family members, service providers, and allies gathered at City Hall Park to call on the Mayor and City Council to advance a budget that shifts significant resources from the bloated Department of Correction to urgent community investments.
The recently released report of the Commission on Community Reinvestment and the Closure of Rikers Island is clear: deep investments in long-neglected communities are essential to both community safety and to ‘closing the pipeline that feeds Rikers,’ as the Mayor has emphasized. But the Mayor’s preliminary budget proposes to preserve a status quo in which New York City runs the most richly funded and richly staffed jail system in the country, yet delivers the worst results. Those resources would be far better used outside of the jail system to meet people’s needs and prevent interaction with the justice system, and correcting that misallocation of funds is urgent. Community investment is community safety, and the safest communities are the ones with the most resources, not the most incarceration.
As the Vera Institute states in their initial analysis of the proposed budget, “The preliminary fiscal year 2023 budget continues a pattern of overinvesting in corrections, even as the proposed budget cuts funding for supportive housing, education, health, and other key social services proven to reduce involvement in the criminal legal system.” The Department is currently exempt from the 3% budget cut applied to all other city agencies, despite evidence of widespread abuse of sick leave and inefficient staffing assignments.
Said Darren Mack, Co-Director of Freedom Agenda, “As a co-chair of the Youth sub-committee in the Commission on Community Reinvestment and the Closure of Rikers, our mission is to identify investments that will prevent or remove young people from the criminal justice pipeline. The question remains, where will the city get the funding from? New York City’s Department of Corrections has the highest DOC budget in the country. The proposed Fiscal Year 2023 DOC budget is $2.679 billion dollars. We spend the most money in DOC and get the worst results. To be clear, we want the programs and services that the people held in pretrial detention rely on to continue to be funded to meet their basic needs. Therefore, we want to be strategic in right-sizing DOC’s bloated budget in key areas and simultaneously strategic in reinvestments in youth programs and services.”
“The profound humanitarian crisis in progress at Rikers Island cannot be attributed to a lack of resources. The current culture of dysfunction and secrecy at the Department of Correction is a hindrance to the City Council’s Charter-mandated duty of oversight and investigation, and we cannot continue to allow the Department to wield an enormous budget without accountability,” said Council Member Carlina Rivera, Chair of the Committee on Criminal Justice. “Decades of prolonged neglect and inconsistent leadership got us here, and every day that passes without urgent intervention is a matter of life and death. I am no longer interested in playing politics as usual in the face of documented disaster.”
“I have devoted years to searching for intensive and quality treatment for my son’s mental health challenges, but it seems like law enforcement is the only thing our so-called progressive City has to offer in unlimited supply,” said Peggy Herrera, a leader with Freedom Agenda. “But we aren’t just throwing away money – we are throwing away PEOPLE. The money DOC is sitting on would be far better used outside of the jail system to actually help people.”
“Increasing the Department of Correction’s budget is not going to solve the unsafe conditions at Rikers and the city jail system. DOC spends over half a million dollars per person detained—for perspective, a single night in Rikers costs more than a night at Midtown’s swankiest hotels, yet rather than five star luxury, people incarcerated are not having their basic needs met and paying the price with their lives. Today ahead of the City Council’s hearing, we’re releasing our Correction’s Watch List that shows that DOC’s budget is projected to go up despite the fact that over a quarter of their uniformed staff are being paid to not work. It is clear that we cannot spend our way out of the current crisis. Rather than feed DOC’s bloated budget, we must instead investing in what our communities need for a safe and thriving future,” said NYC Comptroller Brad Lander.
“Incarceration has changed the makeup of New York City and for too long we've seen people casually forgotten and denied access to care and compassion. To address the impact of the injustice system, we need a holistic and collaborative approach and not the implementation of band aid measures. It is imperative that we work towards creating preventative and interventive public policy that will disrupt the pipelines that perpetuate incarceration, enable homelessness, create mental health and overdose crises. Decarceration is about restoring dignity, and providing compassion to those impacted by the intersectionality of poverty. We are demanding a commitment to these truths and critical investments into our community,” said Felix Guzman, VOCAL-NY Leader and Member of New York City Council's Commission on Community Reinvestment and the Closure of Rikers Island.
Tracie Gardner, Vice President of the Legal Action Center, said "As chair of the health committee of the commission I worked with Commission members who were experts as advocates with lived experience in the criminal legal system, public sector policymakers and practitioners in public health. We also received significant input from Community stakeholders. We were pushed to make Recommendations investments in community health, mental health and addiction treatment infrastructure that prevent people from becoming involved in the cycle of CLS involvement, shelter and emergency room encounters. It is immoral that our City has enabled this and we now have a mandate through the work of the Commission to untangle the City's reliance on Rikers as a healthcare provider."
Council Member Lincoln Restler, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, said “The conditions on Rikers Island are worse than ever before. Additional corrections officers, too many of whom are frequently absent from the job, will not solve the problem. We need to start requiring that officers show up to work and end the strike via sick out once and for all. We should be investing in reentry services and more opportunities in our community - not further imbalancing the highest ratio of correction officers to detainees in the whole country.”
Leah Faria, Community Organizer for The Women’s Community Justice Association, said, "I spent 3 years at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers, so I can attest to the deplorable conditions women and gender expansive people are being detained in. The City should not wait until 2027 to close Rosie's. It should secure Lincoln or Bayview in Manhattan for a Women's Center for Justice that breaks the old model of jail and puts people on a pathway to safe, healthy productive lives. DOC budget funding would be better spent on investments in community-based alternatives for women."
“In 2021, NYC spent almost 3 times more per incarcerated person than the second most expensive jail system in the country - and what do the taxpayers have to show for it? Rikers is a blight on our city, and both the city and the state have to get serious about closing it down and investing in proven interventions that stop cycles of harm. When redistricting goes into effect, there is a good chance that I will represent the people incarcerated on Rikers. While I work to pass the Treatment Not Jails Act to expand proven diversion programs on the state level, I need my partners in the City Council to pass a budget that prioritizes our neighbors’ urgent need for housing, education, and health care over pre-trial incarceration,” said State Senator Jessica Ramos (D-SD13), sponsor of S2881B.
"Never has it been clearer than now that our beautiful city must shift its priorities from policing, prosecution and punishment to the community-based services and supports that everyone needs to live with dignity,” said Council Member Tiffany Cabán. “Let me be absolutely clear: the way we shift these priorities is by shifting funds in the coming budget. Housing, employment, mental health, violence interruption programs, education – these are how we invest our resources upstream, cut off the pipeline to Rikers, and make our city safer and healthier for all who live here."
Council Member Sandy Nurse said, “The recent report by the federal monitoring team, along with the Commission's report continue to show a dysfunctional and deadly crisis at Riker's Island that continues to be ignored by the Executive of the City. The DOC's bloated budget, work slowdown, and lack of accountability is creating violent, chaotic, and unsafe conditions for the people on Riker's Island - a pre-trial detention facility. The DOC's budget needs to be scrutinized through a deep audit, and budget cuts should be made to bring the workforce into a size similar with comparable facilities. I am appalled that NYC is failing to lead on human rights for pre-trial detainees and I encourage the Committee on Criminal Justice to use its full authority for oversight and accountability to address the crisis.”
Said Council Member Althea Stevens, "We must reinvest by funding resources that will prevent people of our communities from interacting with the justice system. Proper investment will lead to providing opportunities for rehabilitation, such as drug and alcohol treatment, education, or mental health counseling. We cannot give up on our people who are affected by the justice system, because they are still members of our community, and we cannot give up on our family."
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