Each year, CFR works with approximately 3,000 families. While each family has a unique story and set of challenges and experiences, we’ve seen the same injustices and harm perpetrated by the family policing system over and over again. As a public defender for the city and nationally recognized expert in family defense, we believe in using our platform for change.
In coalition with community members, system-impacted parents, defenders, and advocates, we are working towards a future where the family policing system no longer exists and Black and Brown families in New York City have the freedom to raise their children with self-determination, abundant support, and community.
The policy team at CFR is guided by the following Core Values and Principles:
Our Current Policy Priorities
New York State
The Supporting Families Together Act eliminates criminal and civil penalties that pressure mandated reporters and other professionals to report families “just in case,” even without clear child safety concerns. All families should be able to ask for help from doctors, teachers, therapists, and other professionals without fearing a Child Protective Services (CPS) report and investigation.
The Maternal Health, Dignity, and Consent Act requires healthcare professionals to receive written and verbal informed consent prior to drug-testing perinatal people or their newborns. This builds trust between perinatal people and their healthcare providers, decreases harmful family separation, and leads to healthier pregnancies, babies, and families.
The Family Miranda Rights Act requires CPS workers across the state to inform parents of their existing rights during an investigation at the point of first contact. If parents know they are entitled to speak to an attorney, are not required to let CPS workers into their home, do not need to answer CPS’s questions, and that anything they share with CPS can be used in court, they can make more informed decisions about what information, if any, to disclose.
The Preserving Family Bonds Act allows judges to order children and their birth parents to stay in contact after termination of parental rights (TPR), if that is in the best interest of the children. These connections are vital to a young person’s developing sense of self and well-being and can mitigate some part of the irreparable harm of family separation.
#Right2RemainSilent requires that youth under the age of 18 have the opportunity to consult with counsel prior to policy interrogation. Currently, 90% of young people waive their Miranda rights prior to police interrogation, and youth are more than three times as likely as adults to falsely confess. #R2RS minimizes the risk of harm arising from false confessions and ensures that youth’s rights are protected.
The Youth Justice & Opportunities Act (YJ&O) alternatives to incarceration, diversion, and immediate record sealing for young people ages 18-25 who are arrested in New York. It builds off of New York’s Raise the Age statute by expanding relief for Youth Offender (YO) status and creating a new Young Adult (YA) status, recognizing that emerging adults have unique needs and tremendous potential, and providing those young adults with effective, age-appropriate interventions in lieu of criminal convictions and harsh sentencing in order to move them out of the criminal legal system and into education, stability, and economic opportunity.
New York City
Family Miranda – Int. 449-2026 & Int. 466-2026
Family Miranda is the concurrent NYC legislation that would ensure that families are informed of their rights at the initial point of contact with a family policing agent. The legislation largely mirrors the New York State Family Miranda Rights Act.
A new Office of Family Wellbeing would provide families with access to community-based support without becoming involved in ACS, whose main priority is to police families. Establishing this office would reduce family policing system involvement by addressing gaps in supportive services as identified by the families who need them.
The Campaign to Close Rikers seeks to decarcerate the system by decreasing criminalization and increasing investment in resources that create true safety, defend the rights of incarcerated people by transforming the conditions of confinement, and divest from the Department of Correction while investing in resources (e.g. housing, healthcare, education, employment) that meet people’s needs.
The G.A.N.G.S. Coalition’s mission is to end systems that target, surveil, harass, and criminalize the association of young Black and Latino people, and advance harm-reducing investments and community-based programs that are proven to make neighborhoods safer. Int. 460 would abolish the Gang Database, prevent successor databases from taking its place, require the City to notify people who were added, create a private right of action, and begin a public awareness campaign to educate New Yorkers about their rights.
We educate the public on the harm the family policing system inflicts on Black and Brown families and use our position within the system to advocate for meaningful legislative reforms.
Our advocacy helped result in the passage of the State Central Register (SCR) Reform Bill, which will eventually change the way the State keeps records on parents like CFR’s clients, so that their records of family policing involvement will not prevent them from securing work.
Our advocacy with the New York City Council helped CFR and other defender offices expand their work to represent parents during family policing investigations and in SCR proceedings.
We collaborated with staff from our criminal and youth defense practices to write a Memo advocating for legislation to Repeal New York Civil Rights Law 50-a, which brought greater transparency and accountability to police officers, firefighters, and corrections officers.
In February 2024, CFR and other leading public defender organizations wrote a joint op-ed for Black History Month about the vital need for Black parents to know their rights when ACS knocks. In 2023, CFR wrote a joint op-ed for National Family Preservation Month about the importance of keeping families together and investing in them and their communities.
The Center for Family Representation (CFR) fights for the dignity and self-determination of the primarily Black and Brown parents and youth who are targeted by systems of family policing and incarceration. We release public statements on timely events and policy decisions that directly impact the communities we serve and align with the positions we have taken in our policy platform. When publishing statements, our goals are to add CFR’s unique perspective to the larger conversation, uplift the work of advocates and communities fighting for justice, and offer relevant resources to our readers.
Statement in Response to Mayor Adams’ Plan to Force Asylum-Seeking Families Out of Homeless Shelters, Thursday, October 19, 2023
Statement Condemning SCOTUS Ruling on Affirmative Action, Monday, July 3, 2023
Statement on the Killing of Jordan Neely, Friday, May 5, 2023
Statement on Proposed Rollbacks to Current Discovery Laws, Tuesday, April 18, 2023
CFR Denounces SCOTUS Decision Overturning Roe v. Wade, Friday, June 24, 2022
Statement in Response to the Racially-Motivated Mass Shooting in Buffalo, New York, Wednesday, May 18, 2022
New York City Defenders Request Reinstatement of Protections of the Family Court Act, Friday, June 4, 2021
Joint Statement in Response to Racial Slurs, Friday, April 16, 2021
ASFA Threatens Family Bonds – Stop the Clock, March 2021
Letter to Governor Cuomo and State Legislature, Thursday, February 11, 2021
Supreme Court’s Ruling – Ending DACA was Improper, Thursday, June 18, 2020
Reforms Needed – Juvenile & Criminal Justice Systems, 2020
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