Atlantic Article Recalls NY’s Role in Incarceration Binge (Crain’s)
Crain’s, September 29, 2015
Atlantic Article Recalls NY’s Role in Incarceration Binge
In a long piece in The Atlantic titled “The Black Family in the Age of Incarceration,” Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds readers that even liberals, including in New York, got caught up in punishment as a solution to the crime woes of inner cities. “In New York, another liberal governor, Mario Cuomo, found himself facing an exploding prison population,” he writes….Mr. Cuomo’s son, current Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has started to unwind that effort, closing a few prisons as the state’s inmate population dwindled, and more recently issuing an executive order to help formerly incarcerated individuals. But in naming a reform effort after his father, the governor chose not criminal justice but economic justice. The New York City Bar Association has stepped up its push for less incarceration as well with the launch of a new initiative.
