CCA Applauds Senate Committee Passage of the Earned Time Act
The Earned Time Act passed out of the Senate Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee. In response, Thomas Gant, community organizer at Center for Community Alternatives (CCA) released the following statement:
“Center for Community Alternatives (CCA) applauds Committee Chair Senator Julia Salazar and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins for advancing the Earned Time Act through committee today. By expanding opportunities for incarcerated New Yorkers to earn time off their sentences through participation in educational, vocational, and rehabilitative programming, the Earned Time Act incentivizes personal growth, reduces recidivism, and safely reunites families. Moving this bill is a critical step toward a more just system, and we urge the full legislature to prioritize its pas sage now.”
BACKGROUND
The Earned Time Act would strengthen and expand “good time” and “merit time” pro grams to encourage incarcerated people to participate in rehabilitative programming and reunite families. Research, including from DOCCS, shows that earned time opportunities help to prepare incarcerated people for reintegration, reducing recidivism rates and correctional costs, and making prisons safer.
The Earned Time Act has extensive sup port from corrections and law enforcement, including the former DOCCS prison com missioner and the former New York City commissioner of corrections and probation, dozens of labor unions, victim services and survivor justice groups, and over 250 organiza tions. The bill is also broadly popular with New Yorkers. Polling by EMC Research found that 74% of New Yorkers support the Earned Time Act.
New York previously had far more robust earned time programs which were gutted in the mid-1990s at the same time that the state ended financial aid for incarcerated college students.
New York is substantially behind other states in its earned time policies, including states as diverse as Indiana, Wyoming, and California.
Right now, over 30,000 people are incarcerated in New York’s prisons. Nearly 75% are Black or brown.
Instead of excessive sentences, survivors of crime overwhelmingly prefer investments in the community, by a fac tor of 15 to 1.
Mass incarceration is ineffective - and costly. It costs nearly $70,000 per year to incarcerate a person in state prison with an annual prison system price tag of $3 billion. These are billions of dollars New York State could spend on education, housing, healthcare, community based anti-violence and restorative justice pro grams.
More than 105,000 children have a par ent serving time in a New York jail or prison, which devastates fami lies, and increases the likelihood of a child’s future incarceration.