Criminal Justice in NY-7:
From the Other Side of the Table
As a career public defender, I’ve witnessed the devastating effects of a criminal legal system built and maintained to perpetuate the systemic oppression that deepens economic and racial disparities across our country. The prison-industrial complex (PIC) and interconnected economic web treats human beings as commodities and runs counter to the goals of crime reduction and rehabilitation. These systems need urgent reform right now to end mass incarceration and be focused on community welfare.
I’ve spent the last 20 years as a public defender in New York City, representing thousands of people on the worst day of their lives. I built the Police Misconduct Clinic at The Bronx Defenders so community members could fight back when officers abused their authority. I started the Solitary Confinement Project to combat the long-term debilitating physiological impacts of isolated confinement. I scaled holistic defense programs to communities across the country. I’ve spent two decades inside this system, watching what it actually does to working families.
This paper organizes the federal agenda around the four stages a person passes through in the federal criminal legal system. Pre-arrest, prosecution, incarceration, and post incarceration. At each stage, federal policy can shrink the system and invest in supports that prevent contact with the criminal legal system.
Pre-Arrest
The decision to arrest is often not right or necessary. Most of the people I’ve represented were in the system because of mental health crises, addiction, homelessness, untreated trauma, or petty offenses that come from poverty. None of those need to be a criminal matter and they lead to compounding impacts on people’s lives. We have the opportunity to fund the alternatives, restrict the worst policing tools, and restore the civil rights enforcement that constrains police misconduct. Let’s stop the problem before it begins.
End the criminalization of poverty. Federal restrictions on fines, fees, and asset forfeiture practices that turn poverty into criminal liability. Federal funding for civil legal services so people can fight evictions, benefit denials, and family court actions.
Federal investment in alternatives to police. Federal funding for clinician-led mental health crisis response, community-based violence prevention and interruption, and trauma-informed services through bills like the DART Act, which redirects existing federal Byrne JAG funds toward diversion and rehabilitation rather than policing. Most of the calls cops are dispatched to need a clinician, a caseworker, or a hospital, not law enforcement.
Restore federal civil rights enforcement of police. Restore the DOJ Civil Rights Division, pattern-or-practice investigations of police departments, and federal consent decrees that the Trump administration has abandoned. End qualified immunity through the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act framework.
End the federal militarization of police. Restrict the Pentagon’s 1033 program that transfers military equipment to local police. Restrict federal funding for no-knock warrants and the SWAT escalation that has produced tragedies from Breonna Taylor to countless others.
End federal AI and surveillance abuse in policing. Algorithmic transparency, civil rights review, and due process protections for any AI used in federal law enforcement. Restrict federal facial recognition and biometric surveillance that the Trump administration is using against immigrant communities and political dissent.
Mandatory federal data on policing. Require federal data collection on use of force, deaths in custody, racial disparities, and federally funded police misconduct. We can’t fix what we don’t measure, and right now we don’t accurately know how many people are killed by police each year.
Prosecution
Once someone is arrested, federal policy shapes whether they’re charged, whether they’re detained pretrial, and what their defense looks like. I’ve watched people lose jobs, homes, and custody of their children because of even the shortest stays in pretrial detention. Prosecutors stack charges to force pleas from people that have no hope of being released otherwise. This isn’t a fair or just system and requires immediate reforms.
End cash bail in federal court. End cash bail for federal pretrial detention. Require real evidentiary hearings before any pretrial detention and fund federal pretrial services through bills like the Community First Pretrial Reform Act.
Federal right to counsel and investment in public defense. Federal grants to state and local public defender offices, full funding for the Office of Federal Public Defenders, and federal investment in civil legal services. Extend the federal right to counsel for people in immigration detention and for children in immigration proceedings.
End the criminalization of migration. Repeal 8 USC § 1325 and § 1326, the statutes that make unauthorized entry and reentry federal crimes. These statutes fill federal prisons with immigrants whose only offense is crossing a border.
End federal prosecution of political speech and protest. Stop the Trump administration’s expansion of federal conspiracy, racketeering, and terrorism statutes against pro-Palestinian student protesters, climate activists, and political opponents.
Incarceration
If someone is convicted, federal policy shapes how long they’re sentenced for, where they’re held, and what their conditions look like. I’ve represented community members who served long sentences for non-violent drug offenses and others that suffered immeasurable harm in solitary confinement. The federal prison footprint is too large, the conditions are inhumane, and the sentencing regime has driven mass incarceration for 40 years.
Abolish the federal death penalty. The federal government should not be in the business of killing its own citizens. The Trump administration ended the de facto federal execution moratorium and conducted 13 executions in its first term, and the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act has been introduced repeatedly to end this practice.
End federal mandatory minimums and restore federal parole. End all federal mandatory minimum sentences, pass the First Step Implementation Act, make First Step Act reforms retroactive and pass the Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act so judges can’t
sentence people for crimes juries said they didn’t commit. I support the work in Albany on the Marvin Mayfield Act and will extend that principle federally.
End the federal war on drugs. Federally legalize marijuana, decriminalize federal drug possession, equalize crack and powder cocaine sentencing, and shift federal drug policy from DEA enforcement to HHS and SAMHSA public health funding. The 40-year war on drugs filled federal prisons, devastated communities of color, and failed to reduce overdose deaths.
End the worst federal prison practices. End federal solitary confinement, end Bureau of Prisons contracts with private operators like GEO Group and CoreCivic, and freeze new federal prison construction. Federal monitoring of BOP conditions, with real consequences when facilities violate them.
End forced tapering of hormones and BOP bans on gender-affirming care. The Trump executive order targeting gender-affirming care has been weaponized against incarcerated trans people in federal facilities, with documented forced tapering of hormones and suspension of medically necessary care. Federal standards must require gender-affirming care and gender-responsive practices in BOP facilities, consistent with the framework state advocates have built through bills like the Gender Identity, Respect, Dignity, and Safety Act.
Federal accountability for deaths in custody and conditions of confinement. Make the Death in Custody Reporting Act mandatory with funding tied to compliance, with federal investigation of every death in federal facilities and federal contract facilities. We need real federal standards and monitoring for BOP conditions, with actual consequences when facilities fail to meet them.
Post-Incarceration
Even the most minor sentences can become a life sentence. Federal collateral consequences extend punishment indefinitely and prevent community members from having the opportunity to reclaim their lives. I've worked with people who finally leave prisons and find that they have been barred from housing, employment, voting and other benefits. The cumulative punishment is so much greater than a sentence and it falls hardest on the families who need their loved one home and earning.
Federal Clean Slate Act. Automatic expungement of federal convictions after sentence completion, including expungement of federal marijuana convictions. The work I’ve done helping people after their release has shown time and again how a conviction is the biggest barrier.
Restore federal civic rights. Pass the Democracy Restoration Act to restore federal voting rights for people with criminal records, restore federal jury service eligibility, and restore federal benefits (SSI/SSDI, Medicare, Medicaid) upon release.
End federal collateral consequences in housing, employment, and benefits. Reform HUD eligibility rules that exclude people with criminal records from federal public housing, expand the federal Fair Chance Act for federal employment, pass federal occupational licensing reform, and end federal SNAP and TANF bans for drug convictions.
Compassionate release and home detention for the elderly and seriously ill. Pass the Safer Detention Act to reauthorize the Elderly Home Detention Pilot Program and improve compassionate release procedures. Federal prisons house thousands of elderly and seriously ill people whose continued incarceration serves no purpose.
Federal investment in reentry. Federal funding for evidence-based reentry programs, drug courts, mental health courts, veterans’ courts, and housing-first programs for people. Reform of federal supervised release to cap supervision terms and reduce technical violations that send people back to federal prison for missing curfew or failing a drug test.
The federal criminal legal system processes social failure through incarceration. It has done so on an industrial scale for over 40 years. The result is the largest carceral system in human history, and the cost has been borne disproportionately by Black communities, brown communities, immigrants, and working families.
I am running because this system needs reform now. End the federal sentencing regime that has filled federal prisons. End the federal collateral consequences that keep people from rebuilding. End the federal cooperation with ICE that turns every encounter with federal authority into a deportation risk. And invest federal resources in upstream supports, mental health, treatment, housing, public defense, civil legal services, that prevent the contact with the system from happening at all.
This is the work I’ve done from the courthouse side for 20 years. In Congress, I’ll do it from the other side of the table.
