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For Immediate Release: Tuesday, May 18,
2004.
Contact: Elizabeth Mendez Berry (212) 613-8036
or Randy Credico, Mothers of the NY Disappeared
(718) 813-0146
Wednesday: Historic Moment
for New York as Joint Senate/Assembly Committee
on Rockefeller Reform Kicks Off in Albany
Mothers of the New York Disappeared,
Advocates, Community Leaders Arrive at State Capitol
to Monitor the Hearings
Real Reform 2004 Campaign
to Policy Makers: We’re United, New Yorkers
Are with Us, And We’re Determined to See
Real Change
As the state legislature’s
joint Senate/Assembly conference committee on Rockefeller
drug law reform kicks off on Wednesday, the Mothers
of the New York Disappeared (survivors of the Rockefeller
drug laws and their families) and other advocates
will be arriving in Albany to monitor the hearings.
Their goal is to ensure that the voices of those
actually affected by these laws will be heard during
the process.
While members of both legislative
bodies have been calling for reform, the question
that many survivors and advocates are asking is
what does the word “reform” really mean?
For this reason, a coalition of Rockefeller survivors
and their families, experts, advocates, and activists,
has come together as never before in order to
watchdog the legislative process on behalf of
the majority of New York voters who support the
Real Reform 2004 agenda. The coalition will keep
the public up-to-date with information and analysis,
and it will expose any effort to derail real reform
with rhetoric and empty legislation.
Real Reform is:
- Reducing sentences to levels
proportionate to those for other non-violent
crimes, and to bring New York into line with
national standards.
- Restoring judicial discretion
so judges can fashion just sentences by examining
the particular case, and to sentence low-level
offenders to community-based treatment.
- Delivering retroactive sentencing
relief to currently incarcerated Rockefeller
inmates serving unjustly long sentences.
- Expanding drug treatment
programs and other alternatives to incarceration
for diverted low-level offenders.
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