Criminal Justice

Requires police officers to receive training instruction for crimes involving sexual assaults; requires training for child protective services workers in certain instances.

Relates to the protection of victims of domestic violence act, which requires defendants to wear global positioning systems monitoring the location of the defendant.

This New York bill strengthens civil rights enforcement by allowing individuals to sue when state actors deny their rights under state law. It requires courts to award reasonable attorney fees to winning plaintiffs (except in cases against judges acting in their judicial role) and directs courts to apply both state law and common law where remedies are lacking. The law supplements existing civil rights protections and references similar federal civil rights laws for interpretation.

Establishes domestic abuse offenses for assaults upon spouses, former spouses, fellow parents of a child in common and domestic partners; provides for issuance of a special information for domestic abuse in the first degree requiring a predicate criminal conviction; designates such domestic abuse offenses as family offenses for purposes of the criminal procedure law and the family court act.

Requires incarcerated individual sexual harassment complaints made against department employees to be investigated by the attorney general; makes the findings and recommendations of the attorney general final and binding on the part of the department.

Eliminates certain court surcharges and fees and probation and parole surcharges and fees; eliminates the requirement that a parolee or releasee receiving a merit termination of sentence be financially able to comply with an order of restitution; eliminates the requirement that a person receiving a discharge of sentence be financially able to comply with an order of restitution and the payment of certain surcharges or fees (Part A); mandates that courts engage in an individualized assessment of a person's financial ability to pay a fine prior to imposing a fine (Part B); eliminates the availability of incarceration as a remedy for a failure to pay a fine, surcharge, or fee, lifts and vacates existing warrants issued solely on a person's failure to timely pay a fine, surcharge or fee and ends existing sentences of incarceration based on such failure (Part C); vacates existing unsatisfied civil judgments based on a person's failure to timely pay a surcharge, or fee (Part D); prohibits the collection of a fine, restitution or reparation from the funds of an incarcerated person; prohibits the payment of court fines, mandatory surcharges, certain fees, restitution, reparation or forfeitures from the earnings of prisoners (Part E); vacates existing unpaid surcharges, DNA databank fees, crime victim assistance fees, sexual offender registration fees, supplemental sex offender victim fees, or probation or parole supervision fees; repeals certain provisions of law relating to restrictions on remitting such fees (Part F).

Permits mentoring programs to conduct background clearances of prospective employees and volunteers to determine whether any such person has been reported for child abuse or maltreatment or is on the sex offender registry.

Includes entities that provide employment or services to formerly incarcerated persons in the preferred source exemption for purposes of state purchasing.

Relates to correctional facility visits by the correctional association; authorizes the correctional association to visit correctional facilities at any time and without advance notice; grants the correctional association access to certain records and information of correctional facilities.

Requires the collection and reporting of sexual offense evidence on the statewide electronic tracking system within seven days of permission to release the evidence by the alleged sexual offense victim; relates to additional rules and guidelines.