** PLEASE USE THE 59 ST ENTRANCE, LOCATED ON 59 ST BETWEEN 10 & 11 AVE **
(accessible via Columbus Circle A/B/C/D or 57th Street N/Q/R/W).
Even as the State’s daily prison population has declined since its peak in the late 1990s, over 30,000 disproportionately Black and Brown New Yorkers are imprisoned today. Together with formerly incarcerated people and families with incarcerated loved ones, policymakers, researchers, and experts will reflect on legislative opportunities to advance justice and safety and address decades of draconian sentencing laws. Speakers will consider strategies including the repeal of mandatory minimums, “second look” policies allowing judges to reconsider excessive sentences, and earned time programs that prioritize in-prison transformation rather than incarcerating people for as long as possible. We will also place New York in a national context, both historically and in the present day. Ultimately, speakers will provoke a conversation informed by lived experience, decades of research, and an appreciation of the fundamental and equal humanity of all people, including those languishing in State prisons today.
