Behind a purple lectern emblazoned with one of her favorite slogans, “New York Stands with Survivors,” Gov. Kathy Hochul proclaimed in October 2024 that she would make “the largest investment to fight domestic violence in state history.” The $35 million pledge was accompanied by the promise to be “laser-focused” in the fight against domestic violence. 

In reality, the millions of dollars in funding went to district attorneys, rather than survivor-led organizations and groups focused on housing, reentry, or any of the myriad services survivors say they actually need. In December, Hochul betrayed survivors yet again by failing to grant clemency to a single criminalized survivor among her year-end clemency decisions while also continuing to ignore systemic sexual violence in New York jails and prisons.

Taken together, Hochul’s actions make it devastatingly clear that her solicitude for survivors excludes incarcerated survivors, who are overwhelmingly Black and non-Black people of color, low-income, queer, trans, and disabled. To focus “pro-survivor” efforts narrowly on locking up their abusers (against most survivor’s wishes), while leaving survivors who are already criminalized to suffer re-victimization by an abusive prison-industrial complex, caters to a subset of whiter, more enfranchised survivors that Hochul leverages for her reputation.

The massive misalignment between Hochul’s rhetoric and the experiences of many survivors gives lie to her assertion that she is “pro-survivor.” The state routinely criminalizes people who survive domestic or intimate partner violence, with charges often relating to self-defense, self-medicating to cope, actions the abuser coerced the survivor to take, or failure to protect children from the abuser. In a rare exception to state officials’ silence surrounding these facts, the New York State Assembly recently declared in language supporting a bill, “Domestic violence and women’s incarceration are inextricably linked.” The numbers convey the scale of the crisis of survivor criminalization: A New York study of women in prison found that 94% experienced sexual or physical violence in their lifetimes, 82% as children and 75% from an intimate partner.

With her “vast and unfettered” power to free anyone through clemency and her frequent mention of how her mother’s work with survivors is her “inspiration,” the least New Yorkers could expect is that Hochul would free criminalized survivors. But Hochul has granted clemency to only three criminalized survivors—one each in her first three years in office—and none in 2024. At this rate, Hochul’s clemency record appears poised to be more anti-survivor than her predatory predecessor, Andrew Cuomo.

Every day a survivor spends in prison is a tragedy, but Hochul’s refusal to use her clemency powers for survivors is especially egregious given that New York prisons and jails are leading abusers in the state. In the wake of revelations about long-running abuse cover-ups by people like Cuomo, Harvey Weinstein, and Jeffrey Epstein, the 2022 passage of the Adult Survivors Act (ASA) opened a one-year window for filing lawsuits previously outside the statute of limitations. The majority of the suits (more than 2,000 of them) were filed by criminalized survivors over abuses by correctional staff, shocking even the bill’s sponsors. The ASA lawsuits, which reveal rampant predation by prison and jail staff—over and above the routinized beatings, psychological torture, and, at times, fatal abuse that typifies jails and prisons—underscore the cruelty of Hochul’s refusal to free criminalized survivors.

Shortly after Hochul’s October DA funding announcement, members of the organization Survived & Punished NY held an event called “Perpetual Punishment: Criminalized Survivorship in Hochul’s New York,” where loved ones of criminalized survivors awaiting clemency spoke out about Hochul’s abdication of her responsibility to use her powers. The group highlighted that even when she does grant clemency, most of Hochul’s pardons (62 of 77) are for decades-old convictions for drug possession or theft. Most of the governor’s commutations (9 of 17) do not release anyone but rather only allow people to ask the parole board for freedom at an earlier date. LaQuintae Bradley’s mother, Tami Eldridge, has been incarcerated for decades since LaQuintae was a young child. She spoke at the event, saying, “If my mom was to get clemency … if they open those doors and let her go … it would be the completion of a family for me. It would be the joy of my life.”

Like survivors awaiting clemency, survivors suing prisons and jails under the ASA have also taken Hochul to task over her silence about the abuses revealed through the law, most notably at a large rally in November demanding action to stop abuse of incarcerated people. Nevertheless, her office persists in refusing to acknowledge these survivors’ mass victimization by the state. Hochul has so far taken no steps to protect survivors while they’re locked up—even after ASA suits revealed how frequently they’re sexually abused.

Hochul’s pro-survivor brand is merely a velvet glove over the iron fist of her single-minded, tough-on-crime, law-and-order political commitments.

Hochul’s disturbing indifference to these twin crises—of the state criminalizing survivors and then re-victimizing them through sexual violence meted out as a routine part of their incarceration—appears to present a paradox for a purportedly pro-survivor governor. However, the paradox is easily explained on closer examination: Hochul’s pro-survivor brand is merely a velvet glove over the iron fist of her single-minded, tough-on-crime, law-and-order political commitments. Hochul left no doubt about her true focus being the expansion of criminalization when she made sexual assault and domestic violence the centerpiece of her 2015 “State of the State” platform to “combat crime.” 

Of the myriad pieces of “pro-survivor” legislation she signed into law in 2024, none address the critique that long before the moment of criminalization, the state fails to meet criminalized survivors’ underlying needs including safe housing, food security, and treatment and care. Instead, nearly all legislation focuses on expanding criminalization and ignores the state’s role in incarcerating survivors through policies like New York’s domestic violence mandatory arrest policy. 

Mandatory arrests drive up arrests of survivors and disproportionately ensnare queer survivors and survivors of color. Insofar as any fraction of her $35 million “investment” in fighting domestic violence goes to services, the services are available only to those who pursue criminal charges against an abuser. Hochul’s pro-survivor brand is more properly understood as a “pro-using survivors to expand criminalization” brand—a deadly echo of past carceral feminists who have long done the work of racial and class domination.

As the ASA lawsuits show, prisons are not only harmful to survivors; they are mass agents of the exact violence Hochul claims to prioritize preventing. In the face of systemic sexual violence in prisons, it’s clear that there is no such thing as a safe cage, especially for criminalized survivors. Hochul must begin granting survivors clemency en masse and on a rolling basis, a long-time broken promise of hers. Otherwise, her purportedly pro-survivor politics will remain a cruel hoax.