New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s dream of a free education for convicted criminals simply won’t die.
A Manhattan D.A. is providing millions in settlement funds to help boost the plan – something Cuomo outlined at the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus previously.
Via the Times Union:
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo again is proposing a college for prisoners plan. But unlike two years ago, he won’t be asking the Legislature to use state money to fund it.
Cuomo announced that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is putting up $7.5 million in settlement funds to help fund higher education for roughly 1,000 inmates in the state prison system. That proposal is part of a seven-point plan with a theme of racial equality and criminal justice and was announced by the governor at a Harlem church Sunday morning. Unlike most other parts of the seven-point plan, the higher education piece can be done outside of the state budget process.
But the plan — to provide extra funds to criminals that going be earmarked for hard-working families trying to put their kids through college — is not without its opponents.
One of them is State Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin, who tweeted:
Cuomo never learns.
$7.5 mil would go a long way toward helping struggling families pay for college #KidsBeforeCons https://t.co/oV4wtcdmOS— Steve McLaughlin (@SteveMcNY) January 10, 2016
McLaughlin previously joked, “Have we reached a point in NY where the best educational value is to commit a felony do 5 years and come out with a degree?”
But the hardest-hitting criticism of the plan came from Dale Driscoll, the grandmother of Brittany Passalacqua, a 12-year-old who was brutally murdered along with her mother by a felon out on parole. Driscoll tweeted:
@NYGovCuomo @ManhattanDA So the man who murdered my 12 yr old granddaughter gets the education she was robbed of?
— Dale Driscoll #SurvivorsUnited (@helensmomma) January 11, 2016
Brittany’s Law was passed in honor of Passalacqua, creating a publicly accessible registry of convicted violent felons.
There is an online petition called “Kids Before Cons!” in response to Cuomo’s plan to provide prison inmates with taxpayer-funded college courses.
Cross-posted at the Mental Recession
