Alliance Alert: In a recent powerful article from The Buffalo News, longtime Western New York advocates and Alliance leaders pushed back against the state Administration’s proposal to expand involuntary commitment laws. Instead of responding to mental health needs with handcuffs and hospitalization, they called for sustained investment in programs that support recovery, dignity, and real change.
The article features quotes from Alliance CEO Harvey Rosenthal, Western NY Regional Coordinator Adam Selon, former Alliance board member Nancy Singh, and criminal justice reform advocate Jerome Wright—all underscoring the same message: expanding involuntary commitment will not address the current crisis. It hides people, rather than helping them.
Instead of expanding outdated and harmful policies, New York must invest in alternatives that offer care without coercion, including:
- Intensive and Sustained Engagement Teams (INSET)
- Peer Bridger programs
- Clubhouses for connection and recovery
- Housing First with support
- Mandatory Incident Review Panels to identify and fix system failures
These services help people get housing, food, and support, rather than cycle through hospitalization, incarceration and homelessness. They are what people in crisis actually need. The article makes it clear: people are falling through the cracks because they’re being failed by a system that offers few real paths to recovery.
We thank Adam, Nancy, Jerome, and Harvey for their leadership and strong quotes. Their voices are helping to reframe this debate and highlight the urgency of investing in proven, voluntary supports, not expanding failed approaches that will cause more harm.
Take Action: Use this link to contact your state legislators and urge them to:
- Reject involuntary commitment expansions
- Fully fund voluntary programs that keep people housed, safe, and supported
Together, we can build a system rooted in recovery. See below to read the full article and continue to monitor this email for additional ways you can join our advocacy efforts.
Involuntary Commitment of Mentally Ill at Issue in State Budget Talks
Robert Gavin | Buffalo News | March 28, 2025
On Dec. 22, an attacker set a homeless woman on fire aboard a Brooklyn subway.
Within weeks, the horrific killing of 57-year-old Debrina Kawan and other recent crimes aboard subways inspired Gov. Kathy Hochul to propose an expansion of laws that enable the admission of people to a mental health facility against their wishes. The governor said it would make for safer mass transit and a more compassionate system for mentally ill New Yorkers who cannot care for themselves.
Now, involuntary commitment is one of four Hochul-favored initiatives consuming the governor, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, as the trio of state leaders negotiate a state budget that is due April 1 but certain to miss that deadline. Hochul wants the budget to also include prosecution-favored changes to the discovery process in criminal cases, a prohibition on cellphone use for public school students from “bell to bell” and a ban on masks worn in cases of harassment.
The budget talks are ongoing as the state risks the potential loss of some of the $93 billion in Hochul’s proposed $252 billion budget proposal expected from the federal government. Republicans in Congress proposed $2 trillion in federal budget cuts and the Trump administration plans to chop more than $300 million in funding for the state Department of Health, Office of Addiction Supports and Services and Office of Mental Health.
On Wednesday, two longtime Western New York advocates for the mentally ill told The Buffalo News they want Heastie and Stewart-Cousins to reject Hochul’s proposal to expand involuntary commitment, saying it will tax an overloaded system without providing a lasting solution for people in need.
“We need more funding for alternatives, not more coercion,” said Adam Selon, the Western Region Coordinator for The Alliance for Rights and Recovery.
Selon and Nancy Singh, the former chief executive officer at the Restoration Society, a mental health agency in Buffalo, said a better approach would fund and increase voluntary programs, such as statewide “clubhouses” where mental health workers offered patients coordination, support and socialization.
“Not to say that hospitalization doesn’t work in different cases – it does – but it also requires community support,” Selon said. “It requires peer bridging and somebody to kind of walk the path with you. It’s dizzying trying to navigate in the midst of inner-turmoil, external social determinant factors like food and economic insecurity and then also navigate a very complicated insurance and health care insurance system to where you might link with those alternatives on your own.
“So, if we don’t fund the in-betweens, if we don’t provide the spaces for peers to help peers, you’re going to end up with more people clogging jails, hospitals, shelters as they wait for an alternative that actually suits their need and respects their personhood.”
Under existing law, a person must be an imminent threat to themselves or others to be involuntary committed. Hochul wants to allow it to include people who lack the mental capacity and willingness to have clothing, food, shelter and mental care. Citing subway crimes, Hochul unveiled the plan in January in her State of the State address and in her subsequent $252 billion executive budget.
“People should be able to get to work in the morning, attend a play, enjoy our incredible restaurants without the fear of random violence or dodging someone in the midst of a mental health crisis,” the governor said in the address. “Now critics will say this criminalizes poverty or homelessness. I say that is flat-out wrong. This is about having the humanity and the compassion to help people incapable of helping themselves, fellow human beings who are suffering from mental illness that is literally putting their lives and the lives of others in danger.”
Singh questioned where the line would be drawn. “I’m a little confused by what’s being proposed because it seems like a lot of people would be caught under those definitions – I mean a lot of people,” she said.
“If homelessness is one of the criteria to get them hospitalized, OK, fantastic – are you going to empty out all of the homeless camps? Are you going to empty out all of the homeless shelters because they are proving that they can’t take care of their basic needs? Or those who are using soup kitchens? Are you going to empty those out? It’s a little bizarre to me. What is actually being proposed?”
Selon added: “It’s like hitting a pin with a sledgehammer.”
Advocates have said that too often, mentally ill New Yorkers who are involuntarily committed are left in jails indefinitely and traumatized while waiting for beds to become available in mental health facilities.
“The worst coercion is jail and prison,” Harvey Rosenthal, chief executive officer of the Alliance foe Rights and Recovery, said a recent news conference in Albany.
Jerome Wright, a Buffalo-based advocate for mental health and statewide opponent of solitary confinement in prisons, said it was “unconscionable to me that we have criminalized mental illness” and jailed people whose behaviors would be understood by peers to aid them in voluntary programs such as clubhouses.
Hochul’s budget called for the increase of clubhouses across the state and to expand Intensive and Sustained Engagement Teams (INSET), which will “help others navigate difficult transitions, whether it’s finding stable housing, re-entering the community after involvement with the criminal justice system, or managing other complex challenges,” according to the governor’s office.
On Friday, Hochul issued a news release announcing that 36 elected leaders from around the state have signed a letter to Heastie and Stewart-Cousins endorsing the governor’s mental health agenda, including her plans to expand involuntary commitment, allow nurse practitioners to initiate involuntary commitments and to expand “Kendra’s Law,” which allows involuntary outpatient treatment of mental health patients. It was inspired by the 1999 killing of Fredonia native Kendra Webdale, who was pushed off a subway in Manhattan by a mentally ill assailant, Andrew Goldstein.
Buffalo Mayor Christopher Scanlon, Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino, Olean Mayor William Aiello, Fredonia Mayor Mike Ferguson and Silver Springs Mayor Raymond King signed the letter to Heastie and Stewart-Cousins, as did the mayors of Rochester, Syracuse, Albany and Yonkers, among other municipalities.
Neither Heastie nor Stewart-Cousins included the governor’s plan for involuntary commitment in their spending plans.
“We understand that there are people who need assistance and we want to make sure that they get it,” Stewart-Cousins told reporters Wednesday. “We don’t want a revolving door.
We don’t want people just held somewhere and then back, the opportunity to actually refer people to the appropriate places having been lost. We don’t want that. So, I think that is where we are. We want to make sure that happens to people who need help is what should happen.”
On Thursday, when asked about the status of the involuntary commitment proposal in the Assembly, Heastie said: “We’re still bouncing around proposals. We haven’t had super in-depth discussions. I feel like the majority of the conversations were more about discovery and the cellphones but I’m sure the conversations around the mental health stuff will start to pick up.”
Under justice reforms that took effect on Jan. 1, 2020, prosecutors face tighter windows to share 21 different types of evidence – known as discovery – with the defense. They must share it within 20 days of an arraignment for jailed defendants and 35 days for defendants who are not jailed.
Hochul has said it is too easy for cases to be dismissed for “technicalities” because prosecutors missed speedy trial deadlines requiring that they be ready for trial within six months from the start of felony charges, 60 days for misdemeanors and 30 days for violations.
On Monday, Hochul renewed her call for the change after meeting behind closed doors in the Capitol with prosecutors and victims of domestic violence, victim advocates and district attorneys. She said her proposal would eliminate a loophole that allows defendants to legally challenge the prosecution’s compliance with discovery rules, which she said leads to dismissals.
“I will simply hearken back to the 2019 reforms,” Hochul said. “We did not make those historic changes in order to let abusers walk free. But that, my friends, is exactly what is happening.”
Sen. Patrick Gallivan, R-Elma, a former Erie County sheriff, backed the governor’s plan, saying the discovery reforms that took effect in 2020 “went too far, prioritizing criminals over law-abiding citizens and crime victims.”
His news release highlighted the position of Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane who, in a statement, said: “We’re seeking common sense modifications to the current law that will allow judges to consider whether an alleged discovery violation has prejudiced a criminal defendant while protecting the rights of the accused and limiting procedural delays. A dismissed case or a reduced plea based on a discovery-related technicality and unrelated to the merits of the case robs victims of justice and allows criminals to escape accountability.”
Defense advocates have expressed fears that Hochul’s proposal will essentially repeal the changes that took place in 2020.
Stewart-Cousins said that conceptually, none of the three leaders want to see cases wrongfully thrown out because of a trivial technical reason, but also want to avoid wrongful convictions – a key objective of the justice reforms. She said discussions are about the specific language in any new discovery law.
“Any time you change something that has been the way it’s been, it’s hard,” she said.
https://buffalonews.com/news/local/article_fe06394f-023d-468b-88a0-608966b2236f.html