The role that criminal justice reform played in the 2024 election is part of an ongoing post-mortem for Democrats, and becoming part of the discussion about the 2025 legislative session and the 2026 election beyond.
While 2025 is not an election year for state lawmakers, Joe Bonilla, managing partner at Relentless Awareness, said the current political climate and deliberations among Democrats about 2024 could bring any momentum for a progressive push on criminal justice issues this session to a halt.
“We have that one little bit of session to be the buffer,” he said. “The governor, certainly with potentially a primary on her hands in 2026, wants to look like she is tougher on crime, and a lot of the issues that suburban voters have indicated.”
He stressed that Gov. Kathy Hochul is vulnerable to a challenge from the center in two years, and he doesn’t anticipate her State of the State package to be progressive on criminal justice issues, and could even include additional tweaks to New York’s past criminal justice reforms.
“I would expect that the Senate and the Assembly, along with the governor, would come up with a package that would try to address some of the concerns they’ve been hearing from the public,” he said.
Hochul has been put on the defensive for the past week, with Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres teasing a potential primary challenge.
He has blamed the governor and Mayor Eric Adams, in part, for a stabbing spree in Manhattan, and blasted Democrats for policies like defund the police.
Hochul defended her record on criminal justice and mental health issues Tuesday.
“We have changed our laws in the State of New York, and no governor in our history has invested more in mental health services than I have. Our system is functioning in a way that was not operational just three years ago,” she said.
Hochul also addressed another issue for Democrats that has become intertwined with crime: immigration.
The governor stressed she wants to put legal asylum seekers to work, but drew a clear line.
“That’s separate from people who are criminals,” she said. “If someone breaks the law, I’ll be the first to call up ICE and say, ‘Get them out of here.’”
Republicans have tied immigration and public safety messaging together, even though studies show no such tie. Bill O’Reilly, Republican strategist for the November Team, said it was effective for the GOP in New York as they worked to paint Democrats as out of touch and made gains in support across the state.
“The crime, what the heck is going on with the migrant issue? It’s all blended into these feelings of unease that voters expressed on Election Day,” he said.
He argued that beyond tougher rhetoric on crime, he anticipates Republicans will encounter the challenge of a Democratic Party working harder to stay on message across the board over the next two years.
“The word we can expect to hear throughout 2025 and ’26 is affordability,” he said. “I think the Democrats are going to take that word and they’re going to find any way to use the word affordability because they learned their lesson on that a bit.”
We reached out to the chairs of both relevant committees in the Senate and Assembly to get an idea of criminal justice priorities for the upcoming session, but did not hear back.
We know from the Correctional Association of New York’s 2025 Legislative Agenda that top line items include increased oversight of the Department of Corrections and reform to sentencing and parole, among other bills.