MEDIA ADVISORY: PRESS CONFERENCE
WHEN: Friday, January 31, 10:30 am
WHERE: Judson Memorial Church, Meeting Room Balcony
55 Washington Square South (between Thompson and Sullivan Streets)
WHO:
Assembly Member Jeffrion L. Aubry (D, 35th District, Queens), Assembly sponsor
Senator Bill Perkins (D, 30th District, Harlem), Senate sponsor
City Council Member Daniel Dromm (D, 25th District, Queens)
Five Mualimm-ak, survivor of solitary confinement in New York prisons
Jessica Casanova, aunt of man in solitary confinement
Scott Paltrowitz, Correctional Association of New York and Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement
Claire Deroche, National Religious Campaign Against Torture and Campaign for Alternatives to Solitary Confinement
WHAT:
The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act.
Just introduced in the New York State Assembly (A08588) and Senate (S06466), this pioneering bill is being hailed by supporters as the most comprehensive and progressive legislative response to date to the nationwide problem of solitary confinement in prisons and jails. As written, it would virtually eliminate a practice that has been increasingly denounced as both dangerous and torturous, while protecting the safety of incarcerated individuals and corrections staff. More than 5,000 people are currently being held in solitary and other forms of isolated confinement in New York’s state prisons and local jails.
On hand and available for interview will be the bill’s Assembly and Senate sponsors and other legislators, along with individuals who have personally experienced solitary confinement, family members of those currently in solitary, and advocates from the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement, which was instrumental in drafting the bill.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Scott Paltrowitz, 212-254-5700, spaltrowitz@correctionalassociation.org
Sarah Kerr, 212-577-3530, SKerr@legal-aid.org
Five Mualimm-ak, 646-294-8331, endthenewjimcrow@gmail.com
This legislation will enable people in the movement to encourage alternative means of reducing violent behavior other than officers use of excessive force or long periods of being placed in solitary confinement for 23 out of 24 hours a day, being fed through an opening in the door cell. The plan is well thought out and we do not have to wait months till the Board Of correction outsources resear4ch to undergraduates in city universities. Two members of the board of corrections has been on the Board since 2005. They have stood back and remained silent. The Minutes of the Meetings since 2004 reveal their indifference and disinterest by their 33 percent absent rate of attendance records. With stop and frisk finally being ended, non profit organizations will focus on the criminal injustice system to bring forward their non-profit goals of fund raising based on the issues of the day. Grassroots should be individuals following their conscience, not seeking consensus and inaction but individuals so passionate they move on their own to meet with government officials, elected officials, and students. The Year 2014 will be the Year of the Individual. Silence is Betrayal. Consensus is inaction. Non-profits act on consequences , individuals act on basis of the conscience and heart.