#FreeThemNY #FreeThemNY #FreeThemNY
#FreeThemNY
The #FreeThemNY campaign is a project of the New York affiliate of Survived and Punished, a grassroots prison abolitionist organization.
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Our campaign is dedicated to freeing criminalized survivors of gender violence held in prisons in New York. We call on Governor Hochul to immediately use her clemency powers to free people from prisons.
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To learn more about the larger perspectives behind this campaign, visit the “Analysis & Vision” section of the Survived and Punished national website.
We call on Governor Hochul to immediately use her clemency powers to free criminalized survivors of gender violence held in prisons in New York. We call on Governor Hochul to immediately use her clemency powers to free criminalized survivors of gender violence held in prisons in New York. We call on Governor Hochul to immediately use her clemency powers to free criminalized survivors of gender violence held in prisons in New York.
-Survived & Punished NY
End the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence!
Take Action
1.
CONTACT
GOVERNOR
HOCHUL
What is our call to action?
Send an email to tell Governor Hochul: Grant Clemency for ALL Criminalized Survivors.
We’re asking Governor Hochul and her administration to use her unlimited power to grant clemency and grant commutations to criminalized survivors of Domestic Violence currently incarcerated throughout the New York State Prison System.
2.
PHONE
ZAP!
What is a phone zap?
Call-in campaigns, also known as “phone zaps,” are one of many tools to directly let public officials and others know what you want them to do or to stop doing.
Who are we targeting?
Office of the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul: 518-474-8390
- Executive Clemency Board: 518-473-8186
BACKGROUND
The New York State Constitution grants the governor power to pardon or commute any sentence, at any time, for any reason. Under Governor Cuomo, out of at least 7500 applications for clemency, Cuomo granted only 21 commutations.
These commutation numbers are pitifully low compared to the more than 50,000 people held in prisons across New York State.
We called on Governor Cuomo to use the powers of his office to immediately free all criminalized survivors of gender violence.
Source: All figures on clemency applications received from 2011-2015 and commutations granted were directly sourced from New York State. Cuomo’s Executive Clemency Bureau has refused to publicly release any data on clemency applications received after 2015. To represent the volume of applications received since 2016, S&P NY has used data on clemency applications published by journalist Reuven Blau in August 2019.
On October 15th, 2021, members of Survived and Punished NY delivered findings from a 70-page human rights report conducted by the Cornell Human Rights Clinic in partnership with S&P NY, which details the numerous ways New York State has violated the human rights of survivors, and explains why mass clemency is a vital first step towards reparations for the harm the state has done to all survivors.
Kathy Hochul became governor promising that, unlike Cuomo, she would stand with survivors. But countless criminalized survivors remain incarcerated for their survival actions under her watch, and nearly all people in women’s prisons survived abuse before their incarceration. To date, Governor Hochul has granted clemency to only 3 criminalized survivors. 8 out of the 16 commutations she granted did not even free people, but made them parole-eligible.
Source: These figures reflect data sourced from Hochul’s Executive Clemency Bureau as of October 2024.