Member Mondays: CBE’s Dismantling Racism Team (DRT) presents "#LessIsMoreNY: A Conversation on Combating Racism Through Parole Reform" - Monday, March 1 at 7:30 PM
New York State incarcerates more people for technical violations of parole rules than any other state in the country, wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and harming individuals and families—without evidence of public safety gains. Black people on parole in NYC are 12 times as likely to be locked up for rules violations as whites. #LessIsMoreNY is a unique statewide coalition of prosecutors, corrections officials, community groups, and people on parole working together to remake this system by passing the Less is More: Community Supervision Revocation Reform Act in the New York State Legislature. This conversation will be moderated by CBE member and founding member of the DRT Zachary Katznelson, featuring remarks by Rabbi Stephanie Kolin on behalf of RAC-NY.
Zoom information will be provided upon RSVP.
Moderator:
CBE member Zachary Katznelson is Policy Director of the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform, commonly known as the Lippman Commission. He has almost 20 years' experience investigating and achieving change in Rikers and jails and prisons throughout the United States. He has represented people on death row with the Equal Justice Initiative, men in Guantanamo Bay with the British charity Reprieve, and women convicted of killing their abusers with the California Habeas Project. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Isabel Burton and their three young sons. www.morejustnyc.org
Panelists:
Donna Hylton is a women’s rights activist, criminal justice reform advocate, author, and accomplished public speaker who spoke at the Women’s March on Washington in 2017 and participated in a video montage that opened the DNC in 2020. After her release from prison, she founded A Little Piece of Light, an organization named after her memoir that helps women re-enter society after incarceration. Donna’s story shows the tragic trajectory of sexual violence and how it robs women of their confidence, self-worth, and vision for the future. Her story also demonstrates the redemption that can come from confronting and reconciling with childhood abuse and taking personal responsibility for past actions. Donna spent 27 years behind bars, including two and a half in solitary confinement. While incarcerated, Donna earned a bachelor’s degree in behavioral sciences and a master’s degree in English. In addition to her memoir, she was a contributing writer to Breaking the Walls of Silence: Aids and Women in a New York State Maximum Security Prison (foreword by Whoopi Goldberg), and Changing Minds: The Impact of College in a Maximum Security Prison. She participated in a public broadcast announcement We Are Not Who You Think We Are. www.alittlepieceoflight.net
Vincent Schiraldi is the Senior Research Scientist at the Columbia School of Social Work and co-Director of the Columbia Justice Lab. He has extensive experience in public life, founding the policy think tank, the Justice Policy Institute, then moving to government as director of the juvenile corrections in Washington DC, as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Probation, and Senior Policy Adviser to the NYC Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice. Schiraldi gained a national reputation as a fearless reformer who emphasized the humane and decent treatment of the men, women, and children under his correctional supervision. He pioneered efforts at community-based alternatives to incarceration in NYC and Washington DC. Schiraldi received a MSW from New York University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Binghamton University. https://justicelab.columbia.edu/
Representative from the Katal Center TBA
Katal works to strengthen the people, policies, institutions, and movements that advance equity, health, and justice for everyone. We are focused on three big, inter-related goals: ending mass criminalization, mass incarceration, and the war on drugs; advancing evidence-based solutions to promote health and safety, eliminating unwarranted racial disparities, and securing equitable communities and outcomes; and building leadership and organizing capacity of neighborhood residents, as well as organizers, advocates, and community groups, to effectively drive and shape real change. www.katalcenter.org