Senior Supervising Policy Counsel Jacqueline Gosdigian testified on the need to expand community-based alternatives to policing and incarceration before an oversight hearing of the New York City Council Committee on Children & Youth.

"Too often, in low-income communities of color, young people and their families seeking assistance or navigating conflict find that NYPD or ACS are the only resources. Involvement by these state surveillance agencies is harmful and traumatizing. Young people do not get the support they need, and Black and Latine young people face disproportionately harsh outcomes. In New York, Black children make up 40% of the children in the foster system yet make up only 15% of the children in the state. Black children also fare far worse in the foster system and have much longer stays in placements. The trauma and instability of family separation caused by the family policing system puts youth at greater risk for criminal legal system involvement. In the criminal legal system, the same racially disparate outcomes continue. Black and Brown youth are more likely than their white peers to be charged with a crime, face pretrial detention, be tried as adults, and face harsher sentences."

Read the full testimony here.