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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Ashley Santiago, Senior Community Organizer from Freedom Agenda
6:28:28
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161 sec
Ashley Santiago, representing Freedom Agenda and the Campaign to Close Rikers, testifies about the need to prioritize community-based care and mental health services over incarceration. She shares a personal story about her nephew's experience with the criminal justice system and advocates for budget reallocation from corrections to supportive programs.
- Requests an additional $39.8 million for housing and mental health needs, including justice-involved supportive housing, intensive mobile treatment teams, and crisis respite centers
- Criticizes the plan to spend $150 million on hiring more correctional officers
- Emphasizes the importance of addressing root causes of behavior and providing treatment instead of incarceration
Ashley Santiago
6:28:28
Good afternoon Chair Lee, Chair Showman, and committee members.
6:28:31
Thank you so much for allowing me to testify today.
6:28:34
My name is Ashley Santiago.
6:28:35
I'm a senior community organizer at Freedom Agenda and a member of the Campaign to Close Rikers.
6:28:41
I'm also a native New Yorker.
6:28:43
I'm from a low income community in Queens, and I've seen for years how our city's budget continuously prioritize systems of punishment like Rikers Island instead of systems of healing and true rehabilitation.
6:28:55
My 23 year old nephew, Michael, who has been diagnosed with autism and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder was never able to access quality treatment, which led to many interactions with law enforcement, several psychiatric hospitalizations, and eventually two and a half years on Rikers Island where his mental health crisis was labeled as tantrums by correctional officers who responded to him with ridicule and abuse.
6:29:18
His time in Upstate Prison afterward has created even more trauma including extended periods in solitary confinement.
6:29:27
At the cost of over half a million dollars per person per year, New York has spent over a million dollars to keep Michael at Rikers.
6:29:35
Imagine if that money had been put in or invested in treatment to address the root causes of his behavior.
6:29:41
Instead, my family and I will have to work even harder to help him heal from the trauma of incarceration when he does come home.
6:29:48
In the written testimony estimate, I will include a detailed budget analysis from the campaign to close Rikers that outlines opportunities to shift resources from harmful bloated agencies like the Department of Corrections to community based care.
6:30:01
Among those priorities, we are urging the council to allocate an additional 39,800,000.0 to meet housing and mental health needs and fulfill commitments in the closed Rikers plan including 4,800,000.0 more in annual funding for justice involved supportive housing, 22,000,000 more to create more intensive mobile treatment teams, seven million more to create more forensic assertive community treatment teams, six million more to open up four new crisis respite centers, and we also urge you to include the 4,500,000.0 for 60 additional peer specialists to staff the city's multi agency mental health and crisis response teams.
6:30:37
And I'll just wrap up by saying the cost of these programs is basically nothing compared to the $150,000,000 the administration plans to spend next year to hire 1,100 more correctional officers.
6:30:49
When the Department of Corrections was asked why they would possibly need a staffing ratio that is four times higher than the national average, the commissioner replied that there are many people with serious mental health needs in their custody.
6:31:00
Clearly the priority should be on eliminating the shamefully long waiting list for people to access community based care, not budgeting for more people to end up in Rikers.
6:31:09
Thank you.
Jordyn Rosenthal
6:31:09
Thank you.