Reform doesn’t stop at the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act

This month marks the three-year anniversary of New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, which was passed after a decade of visionary organizing by currently and formerly incarcerated survivors and our allies. The legislation is the first sentencing reform of its kind in the country. It allows judges to sentence survivors of abuse to prison terms shorter than required by mandatory minimums and, in some cases, to community-based alternatives to incarceration. It also provides survivors currently in prison a way to apply for resentencing. To date, the law has led to sentence reductions for 25 domestic violence survivors – saving close to 56 years of needless incarceration. If these survivors had been given alternative sentences initially, it would have saved them from over 173 years of prison time.

The Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act represents the beginning of a paradigm shift in how we understand justice, trauma and harm. Critically, it begins to break down the false dichotomy of victim and perpetrator, recognizing that many of us who have done harm were survivors of violence first. 

I know this from experience. In 1996, I was charged with capital murder and sentenced to 50-years-to-life in prison for a crime I was forced to participate in by my estranged husband. Although the extreme abuse, coercion and trauma I experienced at the hands of my abusive husband was directly connected to the crime, it was not considered when I was handed a death-by-incarceration sentence. Then, in 2020, after serving 23 years, I was granted clemency when the governor recognized that the crime I was convicted of was the result of extreme domestic violence. 

Although I was freed through clemency, we cannot rely on this rare executive remedy to address the injustices of New York’s sentencing laws. Urgent reform is needed. In New York, we have an opportunity, right now, to stop generations of further harm and needless incarceration by passing the three bills of theCommunities Not Cagescampaign, especially the Eliminate Mandatory Minimums Act and Second Look Act.

The Eliminate Mandatory Minimums Act is necessary to allow judges to consider mitigating factors, such as the abuse I experienced. Right now, even if a judge believes a sentence to be unfair or unwarranted given the specific facts of a case, their hands are tied by mandatory minimum sentences. By allowing judges to make individualized determinations rather than requiring them to impose a lengthy prison stay regardless of circumstances, this legislation builds on the legacy of the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. 

The Second Look Act would allow judges to review and reconsider excessive sentences to take into account changing laws and norms, as well as individual transformation. Right now, there is no mechanism outside of the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act in New York state for a sentence to be reassessed, even if many agree that it is overly harsh or unwarranted. We cannot and should not rely on executive clemency for this purpose, but must create a mechanism for judges to reevaluate decades of draconian sentences that failed to acknowledge – or solve – the complex cycles of violence.

The prison where I spent 23 years, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, is where thefirst public hearing on domestic violence was held inside a prison facility. In the hearing, another incarcerated survivor said, “There is a need for education, outreach and support services for people involved in a cycle of domestic violence. Alternate sentence plans should be developed.” I wonder how many thousands of years of survivors’ incarceration we could have saved had the pleas of those women at the 1985 hearing been heard sooner.

I am now the Support Services coordinator at theSurvivors Justice Project, which works to support – and free – incarcerated survivors of domestic violence through implementation and expansion of the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act . I focus on identifying where there is a need for services, training or resources for survivors applying for relief under this law.

Through the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, New York is beginning to understand that violence and harm do not exist in a vacuum. No one’s first experience of harm is committing it. When I was inside, I saw firsthand how many of us had survived intergenerational poverty, childhood trauma, gender-based violence and state violence long before our incarceration. 

We need to expand this understanding, which is implicit in the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, to everyone who is facing incarceration or is currently behind bars. Prisons across New York state are brimming with Black, brown and poor people. The vast majority – if not all – of these incarcerated people are survivors of interpersonal abuse, violence or the systemic harm of poverty. Rather than addressing these cycles of disinvestment and harm, lengthy prison sentences exacerbate them and result in prisons full of survivors. The courts must be allowed to consider this when imposing a sentence, or when reconsidering someone’s extreme sentence.

We spend $3 billion a year in New York to remove people from our families and communities, and warehouse them in prisons. If we spent that money, instead, on trauma-informed mental health services, education, housing, healthcare, resources for survivors and restorative justice programs, we could build a state where true public safety and healing are accessible to all. 

It’s time to overhaul New York’s sentencing laws and invest in our communities.