Category: In the News
Aljazeera: Still Here: A story of incarceration and gentrification in the US
“I am the proud mother of four children.” When Tamanika was sent to prison, three of her four children were put in foster care, while her oldest child stayed with her family. “The court tried to terminate my parental rights but I fought hard and it didn’t happen,” she explains. “I had a wonderful team […]
The City: Parents Seeking Return of Children First Must Forge Connections On Screens
“At the Bronx Defenders, which is working with the Bronx mother, efforts to reunify families are sometimes cut short by an agency’s insistence that a parent have a longer track record of supervised visits with caseworkers and sessions with therapists and counselors. The pandemic has also had a significant impact on access to services — […]
City Limits: Acceso a justicia para quienes no hablan inglés se parece a una sala de emergencia
La situación es complicada cuando las organizaciones no pueden pagar por servicios privados de traducción simultánea y además los abogados no son bilingües. Si un acusado está en custodia, “tú no puedes hablar con la persona si no sabes el idioma”, explica la directora de práctica criminal en The Bronx Defenders, Alice Fontier. Así que […]
Talk Poverty: Coronavirus Could Cost Parents Custody of Kids in Foster Care
“In some states, like New York and California, there have been no official statewide orders cutting off all in-person visitation; instead agencies have been directed to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. But those on the ground say this is still leaving many parents without a voice in the decision-making process. Despite state-level guidance that […]
Revolt: Lil Tjay partners with The Bronx Defenders to support inmates amidst pandemic
“Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, low-income black and brown communities like the Bronx have been hit the hardest,” Bronx Defenders Executive Director Justine Olderman said in the release. “This is a community that depends heavily on public transportation, encompasses countless essential workers and is over criminalized into a legal system that crams people into jail […]
City Limits: Opinion: ICE Detention Facilities Have Failed to Protect People from COVID-19
“As COVID-19 continues to devastate the country, we have witnessed the failure of Immigration Customs & Enforcement (ICE) to prevent the transmission of the coronavirus in our local jails. It is hard to imagine a government agency less equipped to address the COVID-19 pandemic than ICE. Even under “normal” circumstances before the pandemic, ICE proved […]
Telegram: Former Wachusett star Jeremy Bennie, now a public defender, experiences New York during pandemic
“I fell in love with the work, I fell in love with the people, I fell in love with being able to represent clients and work so closely with clients and really tell their stories, and I haven’t looked back.” Bennie works for The Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit that represents low-income residents in the New […]
New York Daily News: Protecting children in the age of COVID: The Administration for Children’s Services must change its approach
The COVID-19 crisis has forced us to rethink every aspect of American life, revealing that many structures damaging in normal times are now downright catastrophic. This is true in the criminal legal system, where policies that prop up mass incarceration have enabled disease and death to ravage our jails and prisons. It is also true […]
Politico: Officials, advocates call for release of transgender, vulnerable inmates amid coronavirus
“Transgender people continue to be moved from facility to facility because the Department of Correction often houses them incorrectly and then needs to move them to another housing area,” Deborah Lolai, supervising attorney of the Bronx Defenders’ LGBTQ Defense Practice, in a statement. “This means that transgender people are going to be exposed to many […]
Univision: “No están preparados para la pandemia”: hispano habla de su experiencia en un centro de detención de ICE
“El peruano Carlos Usategui, quien estuvo detenido dos meses en el Orange County Correctional Facility, en Nueva York, asegura que en ese centro penitenciario no se están tomando en serio la crisis desatada por el coronavirus, pues no tienen mascarillas, guantes ni desinfectantes disponibles y los presos están expuestos peligrosamente al virus.” Watch the full […]