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At a City Council oversight hearing on jail programming, Senior Jail Services Attorney Michael Klinger testified that years of funding cuts and staffing failures have left people on Rikers without meaningful access to education, therapy, and reentry programs which undermines public safety and successful returns to the community. While the city recently restored some funding for nonprofit providers, too many people in custody still face canceled classes, missed escorts, and barriers to school enrollment, including young people legally entitled to education and adults eager to earn a GED. "Providing excellent programs will support successful re-entry and at the same time increase safety and security in the jails."

In New York, having a mental health condition can be enough to pull a family into the family policing system, especially if that family is low-income or Black or brown. Instead of receiving care and support, parents are often met with investigation and judgment by systems ill-equipped to understand mental health conditions. Aubrey Rose, Mental Health Team Leader in Brooklyn Defender Services’ Family Defense Practice, is working to change that. In this Spotlight, she shares how BDS’ Family Defense Practice Mental Health Committee brings attorneys and social workers together to challenge harmful assumptions by the family policing system, connect families to support, and reimagine what justice looks like for parents with mental health conditions who are targeted by investigation and prosecution, which can lead to family separation.

Brooklyn Defender Services warned the City Council that New York City’s rapidly expanding data-collection systems are exposing low-income and over-policed communities to unprecedented levels of surveillance and harm. Talia Kamran, Staff Attorney in the Seizure and Surveillance Defense Project, urged lawmakers to modernize privacy laws, curb discriminatory technologies like facial recognition and gang databases, and end the city’s reliance on tools that quietly funnel deeply personal information to law enforcement, “the normalization of stripping low-income and working-class New Yorkers, and particularly New Yorkers of color, of their privacy rights must come to an end.”

Brooklyn Defender Services cautioned the City Council that sweeping federal immigration changes have pushed New Yorkers into the harshest enforcement climate in years - one where even routine interactions with city agencies can trigger detention or deportation. Associate General Counsel Catherine Gonzalez urged the city to close loopholes that allow ICE to exploit local systems, reinforce detainer protections, and eliminate discriminatory policing tools that funnel immigrants into federal custody. As she testified, “ordinary acts of compliance have now become points of vulnerability.”