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Learn about some of the key recent successes of BDS and our Pro Bono partners on behalf of our clients.

Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of the nonprofit Brooklyn Defender Services, said people “continue to face life-threatening conditions and systemic abuse in New York City jails.” She called for more accountability, a reduction in the city’s jail population and the appointment of a federal receiver to manage Rikers.

“Families separated by the foster system should not be forced to be apart even longer because of unnecessary delays in family court,” said Lisa Schreibersdorf, Executive Director of Brooklyn Defenders.

Jackie Gosdigian, Supervising Policy Counsel at Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) testified before an Oversight Hearing on Youth Decarceration.

The act would end the indiscriminate and unconstitutional recording of phone calls for people currently in NYC Department of Correction custody. “NYC’s Department of Correction and surveillance company Securus Technologies have constructed a far-reaching spying system with devastating impacts on those who rely on the jails’ phone system to stay connected. The End Correctional Community Surveillance Act (ECCoS) ensures that New Yorkers can talk to loved ones who are detained in city jails without fear that their private thoughts and intimacies will be spied on or their biometric, location, and financial information will be stolen,” said Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez, Director of Brooklyn Defenders’ Science and Surveillance Project.

Dinah Foley, LMSW, Social Worker, Immigration Practice testified before the New York City Council Committees on Immigration and Small Business on Preparing Asylum Seekers and Migrants for the Workforce.

The Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, and The Legal Aid Society - New York City’s defender organizations providing free legal representation to detained immigrants through the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) - issued a statement in response to the sudden termination of the free call minutes program at ICE detention facilities where immigrant New Yorkers are jailed.