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The best way for the City to prevent suicide and self-harm in the jails is to stop sending people to Rikers Island and focus on diverting them from the criminal legal system altogether.

The Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender Services, The Bronx Defenders, New York County Defender Services, the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem and Queens Defenders called on Albany lawmakers to enact a series of critical criminal legal system reforms before session concludes in early June.

The budget process was consumed by discussions of changes to discovery, bail and mental health protections, but much work remains to thoughtfully address the entrenched failings of the criminal legal system and its wide-ranging consequences.

As New York’s family defense organizations, we write to share our legislative priorities for 2022, which seek to shrink the pathways to the state’s foster system, minimize the long lasting and traumatic effects on those who have survived what is often referred to as the family regulation system, and shift power and autonomy back to the families and communities most impacted by this system, as they know best what support and resources they need to thrive and raise the next generation of New Yorkers.

In a recently issued letter, 21 family defense organizations representing thousands of parents across New York State in Family Court called on Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie to pass a suite of bills aimed at protecting the rights of parents and caregivers and reducing family regulation and surveillance that disproportionately target low-income Black and brown New Yorkers.

Many of the people that we serve live in heavily policed and highly surveilled communities. These communities bear the brunt of the NYPD’s privacy-destroying and abusive behavior.

"The Governor’s decision to roll back bail reform, despite evidence proving its success, will inevitably put more Black and brown New Yorkers behind bars, separate countless families, and deepen systemic racism already embedded in the legal system. No New Yorker should lose their pretrial freedom because they cannot afford to pay bail."