Le Nouvel Observateur: Dans L’enfer de Rikers Island
“Several were younger than me, I can’t imagine myself in their places. These youths are completely dehumanized, they are called ‘bing monsters.’ It’s terrible to see that it is considered normal to brutalize youths this young.” – Skylar Albertson, Assistant to the Director, The Bronx Defenders “We have paid bail for 140 people, who were…
Village Voice: How Chuck Schumer’s New Legislation Equates Climbing a Bridge to These Violent Crimes
This week, Senator Charles Schumer proposed making trespassing on “critical infrastructure” — bridges, buildings, and the like — a federal offense, punishable by up to five years in prison. He pointed to the pair of German artists who this summer allegedly scaled the Brooklyn Bridge and replaced its American flags with white flags; a Russian…
Vice: How can we stop cops from beating and killing?
The multitude of black men killed by police led Maryam Monalisa Gharavi to call these last months “the Summer of Death” in her New Inquiry essay “The Killing Class.” In New York, police strangled grandfather Eric Garner. In Ohio, police gunned down John Crawford III in a Walmart while he was checking out an air…
Gothamist: John Oliver Uses Law & Order Actors To Explain Civil Forfeiture
The disturbing use of civil forfeiture by many cities and states to line their coffers has been on the rise, and Last Week Tonight took up the topic and framed it the only way most of us can understand: In the guise of a Law & Order episode. As The New Yorker put it in…
NY City Lens: South Bronx Defender
The Bronx Defenders Criminal Defense Attorney Porsha Shaf’on Venable was featured in a piece by NY City Lens, a news website produced by students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, talking about her passion for being a public defender and serving the Bronx community: Public defender Shaf’on Venable wants to make a difference in her…
The New Yorker: Getting Teen-agers out of Solitary at Rikers
In this week’s New Yorker, I wrote about a sixteen-year-old boy from the Bronx named Kalief Browder, who was accused of robbery and confined on Rikers Island. He stayed there for three years, waiting for a trial that never happened. For the majority of that time, he was in solitary confinement, locked in a cell…
Los Angeles Times: Op-Ed: Cruel and usual punishment in jails and prisons
The 8th Amendment bans cruel and unusual punishment. Yet it happens every day in prisons across the country. Putting aside capital punishment, which I would argue is cruel and unusual on its face, Americans are ignoring a host of horrific conditions that inmates are subjected to. This is not only morally and constitutionally dangerous; it…
BxD’s Mary Anne Mendenhall on Hot 97 ‘Street Soldiers’ discussing the Adrian Peterson child abuse case
Yesterday, September 21, 2014, Bronx Defenders Family Defense Practice Supervising Attorney Mary Anne Mendenhall joined in a compelling discussion on NFL player Adrian Peterson’s ongoing child abuse case, offering keen insights into the experiences and challenges faced by Bronx Defenders clients in Bronx Family Court. The episode of Hot 97’s “Street Soldiers” with host Lisa Evers brought…
Associated Press: Public Housing Safety Policy Can Hit Whole Family
NEW YORK (AP) — Wanda Coleman sits in the New York City public housing apartment where she’s lived for 25 years, surrounded by empty rooms, bare walls and suitcases lined up by the front door. Any day now, she and her teen daughter will be evicted and have no other option than to go to…
Solitary Watch: Seven Days in Solitary
The following roundup features noteworthy news, reports and opinions on solitary confinement from the past week that have not been covered in other Solitary Watch posts. The American Civil Liberties Union released 26 reports alleging extensive abuses in Arizona’s prisons, including claims that individuals are being placed in solitary confinement because prison beds elsewhere are…
Village Voice: Solitary Confinement at Rikers Island is Torture and “Inexcusably Extreme,” Bronx Defenders Say
Inmates are placed in solitary confinement at Rikers Island for “inexcusably extreme” amounts of time, a new report charges, “egregiously disproportionate” to the infractions they are alleged to have committed. While in solitary, it can be difficult for inmates to get access to the most basic of services, including food, showers, and phone time. That’s…
NY Daily News: Rikers Island ‘box’ counts as ‘torture’ for jail inmates: defense attorneys
‘The interviews expose a systemic practice that is unquestionably inhumane,’ concludes the report by The Bronx Defenders. Of the 59 inmates interviewed, some were as young as 16 — and their median age was 20. The “horrific conditions” endured by inmates in solitary confinement at Rikers Island are exposed in a report released Thursday by a…
WNYC: In Solitary, Inmates Languish, Despair and Attempt Suicide: Report
The Otis Bantum Correctional Center has the largest solitary confinement unit on Rikers Island. It holds roughly 400 inmates, according to the Board of Correction. The Otis Bantum Correctional Center has the largest solitary confinement unit on Rikers Island. It holds roughly 400 inmates, according to the Board of Correction. (Brigid Bergin/WNYC) A new report…
Huffington Post: At Hearing On NYPD Force, The ‘5,000-Pound Elephant In The Room’ Is ‘Broken Windows’
NEW YORK — It took two hours during Monday’s packed City Council hearing with NYPD Commissioner William Bratton for someone to mention “broken windows.” It was council member Robert Cornegy (D-Brooklyn) who finally broached the subject, calling the controversial policing strategy the “5,000-pound elephant in the room.” Cornegy made the remark while questioning Bratton about…
The Christian Science Monitor: Retraining the NYPD after chokehold death
NEW YORK — The New York City Police Department outlined a new tactical training program on Monday as the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio continues its efforts to mend the fractured relationship between the nation’s largest police force and the city’s minority communities. Speaking before the New York City Council Monday morning, police Commissioner…
Associated Press: NYC immigrant public defender system breaks ground
NEW YORK (AP) — When Curtis Edmund first heard that a government official had come by his Bronx home looking for him, he couldn’t figure out why. But he agreed to a meeting early this year, and when he arrived, he was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. Edmund, a longtime U.S….
New York Times: For Immigration Lawyers, a Surprise Speaker Who Asks Them to Change Lives
The fresh-faced lawyers included refugees from violence and persecution in Central America, as well as the grandchildren of refugees from Eastern Europe. They arrived at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, on Thursday in similar shades of gray and black suits, poised to continue their training in a new…
The Intercept: America Without the Makeup: Artez Hurston’s Ferguson
A highlight of the challenging and important work that the Arch City Defenders, one of The Bronx Defenders Center for Holistic Defense Training and Technical Assistance Sites, is doing in Missouri: Artez Hurston is curled up on a concrete bench in a Missouri jail cell, fast asleep. He snoozes peacefully, despite the fact that just…
Times-Ledger: Wills’ bill seeks to protect jailed voters’ ballots
The Bronx Defenders Policy Organizer Kamau Butcher quoted in local news article about newly introduced legislation regarding voting while incarcerated. Although jail detainees are kept behind bars, City Councilman Ruben Wills (D-Jamaica) says their votes should not be. Wills introduced a bill at last week’s Council meeting outlining a process for the city Department of Correction…
WNYC’s The Takeaway: Confronting The Hard Realities of Race and Criminal Justice Through Ferguson
The shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri has highlighted a racial divide in the way communities across the country perceive police practices and the criminal justice system as a whole. The statistics seem to tell a specific story. According to the Pew Research Center, compared to their white counterparts, black men are more than…
Capital New York: Local Ferguson reverberation
Capital New York’s ‘Playbook’ highlights statement from Justine Olderman, Managing Director of The Bronx Defenders Criminal Practice as its “Quote of the Day” “The NYPD trots out this justification that they’re arresting people for minor infractions as a way of keeping violent crime down, and yet there is no evidence to show that there’s any correlation…
El Diario: Exigen que se termine el maltrato de reos en las cárceles de NY
Activistas y concejales municipales exigieron a viva voz reformas en las prisiones de la ciudad. El grupo se congregó el lunes en las escalinatas de la alcaldía en donde, de paso, se entregaron más detalles de un proyecto de ley que quiere que los Departamentos de Correccionales y de Salud publiquen información detallada sobre los…
New York Daily News: EXCLUSIVE: Arrests for transit fare evasion surge in recent years, putting it among city’s top offenses leading to jail: Daily News analysis
Fare-beating arrests have increased 69% — from 14,681 in 2008 to 24,747 in 2013 — and are on pace to be slightly higher this year. Nearly 37,500 people have gotten sentences for the $2.50 crime that involved incarceration, including time-served, and 1,802 of those people were minors, according to data obtained by the Daily News….
New York Daily News: The Bronx Defenders’ Justine Olderman in a Letter to the Editor
The Bronx Defenders Managing Director of the Criminal Defense Practice, Justine Olderman, is featured in New York Daily News’s ‘Voice of the People for August 13, 2014’ in a letter to the editor responding to the unfortunate repercussions in a recent incident of a Bronx Judge barring an assistant district attorney from the courtroom for…
The Guardian: The war on drugs has become a war on occasional pot smokers of color
A few years ago, a young black man named DeMarcus Sanders got pulled over in Waterloo, Iowa, because a cop thought he was playing music too loud. DeMarcus didn’t expect his car to be searched, or to get arrested when the officer discovered a small amount of marijuana. He also didn’t expect to spend 30…