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Articles by Lucy Lang
At Miami inspectors general meeting, one question cuts through civic cynicism | Opinion
Recently, my 12-year-old son asked me a deceptively simple question: “Who do you work for?” The answer should be obvious. But his question got at something fundamental about civics — and the ways in which we are failing to properly educate the next generation. I do not work for the New York governor, although she appointed me. Nor do I work for a political party. As the New York State inspector general, I lead an independent oversight agency charged with protecting the integrity of state government.
The U.S. Needs a Commission of Inquiry into State Capture Original
An unaccountable concentration of political and private power is increasingly reshaping how America’s federal government operates, bending its political, legal, and economic systems away from the public good and toward private interests. Political scientists have a name for this: state capture, the systemic manipulation of public institutions by narrow interests for their own benefit. What was once more commonly discussed as a danger in fragile democracies is now an urgent American concern.
Commentary: Inspectors general must bring the public into public integrity
When on the first Friday night of his second term, President Donald Trump fired 19 federal inspectors general without the required notice to Congress, experts spoke out about the critical need for independence for IGs. There has otherwise been a muted response: Litigation to overturn the firings is stalled, Congress has failed to effectively step up, and outrage in the press and among the public has been limited.
Real accountability on keeping guns safe
When a police officer is killed or wounded, the shock reverberates far beyond the precinct walls. A 2021 shootout that left two NYPD officers wounded when they responded to a domestic violence incident involving a City University of New York (CUNY) peace officer was one such moment.
We’re protecting New Yorkers from hunger as feds abandon the vulnerable (Guest Opinion by Lucy Lang)
Lucy Lang is New York’s 11th Inspector General and also serves as the New York State Welfare Inspector General. New Yorkers who suspect fraud or corruption in the welfare system should report it by calling 1-800-Do-Right. As New York State Welfare Inspector General, I see every day how public benefit programs are not abstract policies — they are lifelines. They feed hungry children, keep aging New Yorkers warm in winter, and give working families a measure of dignity and stability.
Goals to Acquire First Rental Property in WA
@Lucy Lang the market is definitely hot here, but Househacking works spectacularly well. We're on our 4th house hack personally, and have just been moving up and converting the old properties to 100% rentals as we go. I think you're looking at some great areas! Price points tend to be lower on the South Side of Seattle than on the North Side, so if you like Edmonds, Shoreline, Lynnwood I would also consider Renton, Burien, and others on the South Side.
New York is aging. The Empire State needs oversight of long-term care services | Opinion Original
New York's aging population is growing, increasing the need for effective elder care oversight. The Long Term Care Ombudsman Program (LTCOP) is a vital resource for ensuring quality care and addressing complaints in long-term care facilities. LTCOP is transitioning to a more professional staffing model to maintain its effectiveness. Continued investment and support for programs like LTCOP are crucial for meeting the needs of aging New Yorkers.
Parenting a neurodiverse child made me a better investigator (Guest Opinion by Lucy Lang)
Lucy Lang serves as New York State Inspector General. She is based in New York City. As April marks Neurodiversity Celebration Month, I have been reflecting on the lessons I’ve learned over the nearly two years since my now 9-year-old daughter was diagnosed with language-based learning differences. It’s cliché but true to say that, as a parent, I learn more from her than she does from me.
Commentary: Prison reforms must include measures to prevent workers' comp abuse
“Miss, can you get us more guards?” You can imagine my surprise when an incarcerated New Yorker asked me this. His request echoed in my mind during the devastation of recent weeks, including Robert Brooks’ murder at the hands of correction officers, Messiah Nantwi’s death earlier this month, and the unlawful work stoppage by employees of the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision that has led to increasingly unsafe conditions in prisons across New York.
Opinion - The retaliatory firing of USAID’s inspector general is a travesty
Any question about the motives behind President Trump’s decision to fire 18 independent, nonpartisan inspectors general in the middle of the night three weeks ago was answered by this week’s firing of the inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development. These firings were designed to impede and deter independent oversight of the Trump administration, putting taxpayer dollars and program performance at risk.
Opinion - The retaliatory firing of USAID’s inspector general is a travesty
Any question about the motives behind President Trump’s decision to fire 18 independent, nonpartisan inspectors general in the middle of the night three weeks ago was answered by this week’s firing of the inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development. These firings were designed to impede and deter independent oversight of the Trump administration, putting taxpayer dollars and program performance at risk.
Protect the independent U.S. inspectors general
Here’s a pro tip when it comes to government oversight. If someone does something in the middle of a Friday night, without a public announcement and then — when asked about it by the press — refuses to provide any details, it probably isn’t something that they want people to pay a lot of attention to. That seems to be exactly what President Trump has done with the firing of at least a dozen federal inspectors general.
Opinion: Inspector generals are at risk under another Trump administration
When it comes to the role of inspectors general, IGs, in the Trump administration, we know that the past is prologue. Then President Donald Trump declared in 2020 that, “Everybody agrees that I have the absolute right to fire the inspector generals,” after firing the State Department Inspector General in the middle of a probe of Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.
Commentary:
Advocates dedicated to ending gender-based violence worldwide consider domestic violence to be a public health crisis and a “solvable problem.” But while it undoubtedly should be solvable, it sadly remains a pervasive issue across the globe, from war-ravaged Darfur to suburban France. And indeed, how can we view it as surmountable when such violence still rages behind closed doors much closer to home?
Deciding Who Gets Prosecuted Is Trickier Than You Think
There's nothing new about prosecutors deciding which cases to pursue, but more of them are going public about such policies. Some lawmakers see prosecutors making public statements about crimes they won't charge as nullification. It's a delicate balance, but no one would want a world where all laws are enforced and maximum penalties always given out. Even before word leaked about the indictment of former President Donald Trump, Republicans were complaining that prosecutors were out of control.
Changes to California’s Criminal Justice System Come Next Year
Prosecutors will no longer be able to use rap lyrics as evidence, defense attorneys will be barred from disclosing a person’s immigration status in open court, and the crime of loitering for the purpose of prostitution will come off the books. Here’s a quick rundown: (TNS) — The new year will be bring several changes to how criminal justice is applied in California.
How to attack New York unemployment fraud
The value of unemployment insurance has never been clearer than in recent years, when COVID-19 led to New York State’s highest-ever unemployment rate of 16% in the spring of 2020.
Rep'd, Inc.
Congressional Candidate for Massachusetts 4th District As an Assistant Attorney General in Massachusetts and as an aide to President Obama and First Lady Obama in the White House, I fought hard for the causes I believe in and learned how government can be a force for good in people's lives. Now I'm running to represent the Massachusetts 4th Congressional District because we need to restore the rule of law in Washington - and I believe I'm the candidate with the experience to deliver on Day One.
OPINION: Treat Traffic Violence Like Other Violence
A crash in Manhattan. Manhattan DA candidate Lucy Lang proposes adding restorative-justice measures to penalties for reckless drivers.
Let New York inmates vote
“Will you ever be allowed to vote again?” were the first words from Vivian’s mother’s mouth in the moments after her daughter was convicted of a crime. She was rightly concerned. As the federal government clashes over sweeping voting rights legislation that would expand polling access and set federal standards for both mail-in and early voting, the deficiencies in New York’s own voting laws are clearer than ever.
Prosecutors and the ‘Moral Imperative’ for Transparency
The combination of COVID-19 pandemic and a nationwide movement to address police violence is drastically changed how the American criminal legal system operates. Many jurisdictions are re-assessing policing, limiting the size of prison and jail populations to reduce the spread of disease, and conducting criminal court hearings and trials via Zoom.
We Have a New Tool to Remove Guns from Abusers; We Must Use It to Save Lives
The Place for New York Policy and politics Developed in conjunction with Joomla extensions. Guns (photo: Mayor's Office) 2020 has been a devastating year for people across the globe, especially right here in New York City. The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic has been particularly dangerous for people in homes where there is intimate partner violence — an epidemic that has only grown worse this year.
For Me, Protecting Abortion Rights Is Personal — & That’s Why I’m Running for DA
October 22, 2020 at 9:00am AM EDT As a young lawyer, I terminated a pregnancy, and I told almost no one. In retrospect, I realize that the secrecy with which I have guarded my decision is the product of a culture of discomfort and shame designed to drive reproductive choice into dangerous shadows.
Will the Manhattan DA race get its own Tiffany Cabán?
Tali Farhadian Weinstein Campaign; Lucy Lang; Jeff Coltin; Chloe Chik, Pythia Public; JuanPatinoPhotography; Cristina Gonzalez; Submitted; Dan Quart; Submitted Manhattan DA Candidates, top from left: Tali Farhadian Weinstein, Lucy Lang, Tahanie Aboushi, Diana Florence; bottom from left: Eliza Orlins, Janos Marton, Liz Crotty, Dan Quart, and Alvin Bragg Progressive candidates are competing to be the leftest of them all.
Commentary: Let pandemic guide us to rethink incarceration
In March I moved in with my parents. My strong, yoga-obsessed, weight-lifting, motorcycle-riding father complained of aches and fever, then was unable to get out of bed. It is strange, but it was from this unanticipated vantage point — sheltering in place with my parents, sister, our partners, and my kids — that I watched an opportunity emerge to transform criminal justice.
Prosecutors' Vital Role in Reforming Criminal Justice
To address racial disparities, they need to collect and analyze more data to evaluate promising policies and better inform their indictment decisions and sentencing recommendations. Lucy Lang, Institute for Innovation in Prosecution | August 10, 2020 | Opinion The nation's criminal-justice system is at a pivotal moment.
Immigrants Might Be Reporting Crimes Even Less Now. Here's Why
The Trump administration showed its animus toward immigration of any kind in its recent short-lived plan to deny visas to foreign students if they were only enrolled in online classes.
What Prosecutors Must Do To Fight Anti-Semitism
The Place for New York Policy and politics Developed in conjunction with Joomla extensions. Security at a yeshivah (photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo) A newly-released report by the Anti-Defamation League paints a stark and troubling picture: anti-Semitism is on the rise, with incidents of assault seeing the largest increase.
The smart way to stop shootings
The past two months have seen a disturbing rise in shootings. Stopping this violence means recognizing that it cannot be solved by the harsh and racially targeted policies that have led to the American tragedy of mass incarceration, and that law enforcement alone cannot end gun violence in a country with more guns than people. Racist demagoguing from the White House and recent threats to send unidentified federal troops into New York City exemplify the wrong approach.
Don't leave college out of conversations about prison education
While the coronavirus highlights the pernicious crisis of mass incarceration, and mass protests highlight our dangerously outdated and racially biased penal system, we can’t help but notice that one solution isn’t included in the conversations often enough: higher education. With 2.3 million people currently behind bars and 77 million people with criminal records in the United States, a college degree is an investment with tangible returns.
Vivian Nixon, Author at The Hechinger Report
by Lucy Lang and Vivian Nixon July 23, 2020July 21, 2020 While the coronavirus highlights the pernicious crisis of mass incarceration, and mass protests highlight our dangerously outdated and racially biased penal system, we can’t help but notice that one solution isn’t included in the conversations often enough: higher education. With 2.3 million people currently behind bars and 77 million people with criminal records in the United States, a […]
Opinion | It’s long past time to let incarcerated citizens vote
Lucy Lang, a former Manhattan prosecutor, is director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. American criminal law is at a turning point, with movements for racial justice, an end to mass incarceration and reallocations of police funding at the top of legislative agendas across the country. But what’s glaringly missing is a call to cease the practice of taking voting rights away from people convicted of crimes.
Virtual Criminal Justice May Make the System More Equitable
The Covid-19 crisis closed local, state, and federal courtrooms, put trials on hold, and delayed justice. Now courts are evaluating how to resume operations in a world where social distancing and limited contact are the new norm. The reopening process is not just vital for our constitutional rights, but necessary to begin to address stark racial disparities that have become all the more apparent through the pandemic and recent reckoning on police violence and systemic inequities.
Prosecutors should protect workers from white-collar crime
Steve Sanchez Photos/Shutterstock Protestors during the Workers Against Wage Theft protest in New York City earlier this year. Workers are struggling and street crime is down, so here’s how prosecutors can shift their focus. Across New York state crime and arrests have dropped dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic, with the biggest decreases being seen outside of New York City. Yet many New Yorkers are suffering more due to economic contraction and the widely anticipated recession.
Restorative justice in action: A man killed another man, then he sat in a circle with his victim’s family
Matthew Lee looked into the tearful eyes of the son of a man he had murdered. It was Nov. 19, 2019, in a conference room at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office Family Justice Center, a year-and-a-half after Mother’s Day, 2018, when the 50-year-old Lee had followed a beloved 87-year-old Lehman College political philosophy professor, Young Kun Kim, into a bank vestibule on the Upper West Side. Kim withdrew $300 from the ATM, and Lee tried to grab the money. Kim resisted and the two struggled.
How to Turn a Punishment Bureaucracy Into a Justice System
A new book argues that the “rule of law” is unjust. As a former prosecutor, I agree. Photo illustration by Slate. Images by 4x6/iStock/Getty Images Plus and leonardo255/iStock/Getty Images Plus.
Editorial: Google’s creepy foray into medical data
The tech world is built on challenging the conventional. But the colossal health industry has mostly escaped the disruptive reach that could upend its costly, sluggish nature. That is, until now. Last week Google acknowledged a link-up with the nation’s second-largest medical system, the nonprofit Ascension chain with hospitals in 20 states. The two entities are sharing the personal records of millions of patients in a deep-diving partnership first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
How to make sure they don’t go back: New York State is failing at prisoner reentry
My friend Emmanuel died this summer. It was an unorthodox friendship, formed in 2018 when I was a prosecutor and he was incarcerated in Queensboro Correctional Facility. We met in a class I teach called Inside Criminal Justice, which brings prosecutors and incarcerated students together to find ways to change the legal system in our city. Eight months after Emmanuel was released, I was in a funeral home in Queens, his brother’s young children holding hands in the row in front of me.
States should follow New York's lead in the fight against racial terror
Over a few shorts weeks this summer — as we neared the 18th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. — young white Americans ended 34 lives during three unrelated mass shootings across the country. While identifying a definitive motive can be a challenge in the aftermath of any crime, there were striking similarities between these shootings.
The Urgency of Prison Reform and What Prosecutors Can Do About It
Attorneys on the front lines of the criminal-justice system should be pressing for a drastically different model of incarceration. August 27, 2019 Executive director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution Eric Risberg / Associated Press More than a decade into my career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, I investigated a murder on upper Broadway, in which two masked men opened fire in a busy street, shooting four people nonfatally and point-blank murdering a fifth.
American Prosecutors Need Not Wait for Marijuana Legalization
Four New York City District Attorneys (photo: John McCarten/City Council) Last week, Governor Cuomo signed a bill effectively decriminalizing recreational use of marijuana. Once in effect at the end of August, New Yorkers charged with possession of less than two ounces of marijuana will face fines instead of criminal charges. Possession of over two ounces of marijuana maintains high fines and the possibility of jail time.
Memo to Prosecutors: Crime Victims Are Your Responsibility, Too
Lucy Lang. Director of the John Jay Institute for Innovation in Prosecution Legendary Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, who died this weekend at 99, would often tell his assistant prosecutors: “Every case matters to the victim.” As far back as 1935, the Supreme Court enshrined the same point in a phrase that still resonates today.
Words Matter In Criminal Justice Reform
Recent calls for prosecutors in cities across the country to use their discretionary power to stop the mass incarceration crisis has resulted in programs called “alternatives to incarceration” and “diversion.” These programs are, for the most part, a good thing, but the terminology shows that we are thinking about the problem all wrong. Words matter, especially when defining our collective goals, expectations, and values.
Shield courthouses from ICE: Immigration enforcement in court settings makes us less safe
Justice, not roundups. (Susan Watts/New York Daily News) The current federal administration is flirting with the ill-conceived notion of appointing an “immigration czar,” deportation efforts have been stepped up across the land, and 280 immigrants were arrested at work in Texas earlier this month. Most alarmingly, the heightened enforcement now reaches into our halls of justice, as even courthouses are regularly swept by immigration officials.
How We Judge Prosecutors Has to Change
Photo: DenisLarkin The criminal justice reform movement has rightfully focused on prosecutors as key actors in bringing about much-needed change. Dozens of reform-minded prosecutors have been elected throughout the country promising to tackle mass incarceration while keeping their communities safe.
Why Your Vote Today Can Be the Start of Real Justice Reform | The Crime Report
The scourge of mass incarceration is at last getting the attention it deserves from reform-minded district attorneys around the country. Many of them are running for election or re-election today. The data bears out the extent to which elected prosecutors have contributed to the unconscionable number of people in American prisons, the tragically disparate racial impact, and underscores the fact that the exercise of prosecutorial discretion could significantly reduce those numbers.
Rachel Mitchell Violated National Prosecutorial Standards
In this Aviation Law column Steven R. Pounian and Justin T. Green address the forum non conveniens doctrine and argue that courts should provide more deference to a foreign plaintiff who selects a forum for legitimate reasons, including that the selected forum court may be the only one with personal jurisdiction over the defendant.
School Record Falls As Middlebury Track & Field Teams Excel
Adrian Walsh won the 5,000-meter run at Tufts on Saturday by more than 10 seconds. The Middlebury indoor track and field teams took part in a pair of invitationals on Saturday with the Panthers boasting a school record and a number of top finishes. The squads participated in the Dartmouth Indoor Classic at the Leverone Field House, while several other Panthers ran at the Cupid Challenge at Tufts in the Gantcher Family Sports and Convocation Center.
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