Wednesday: Historic Moment for New York as Joint Senate/Assembly Committee on Rockefeller Reform Kicks Off in Albany

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:

1. Reducing sentences to levels proportionate to those for other non-violent crimes, and to bring New York into line with national standards.
2. Restoring judicial discretion so judges can fashion just sentences by examining the particular case, and to sentence low-level offenders to community-based treatment.
3. Delivering retroactive sentencing relief to currently incarcerated Rockefeller inmates serving unjustly long sentences.
4. Expanding drug treatment programs and other alternatives to incarceration for diverted low-level offenders.

For more on Real Reform see: www.realreform2004.org