Positions on Social Issues

Prisons/Prisoners, Public School Education, Puerto Rico

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Prison, Prisoners

Convention in 1971 urged immediate administrative and legislative action to ease understaffed and overcrowded conditions in New York's prisons. It also gave support to "increased appropriations for rehabilitation services to prepared the prisoner to re-enter society, such as educational projects aimed at making all inmates at least functionally literate." In 1975, it urged "the development of a new approach to crime and punishment designed to rehabilitate, wherever possible, and to provide humane control in other cases."


Public School Education

Affirming that the "maintenance of free elementary and secondary public schools of the highest quality should continue to be the main objective of local, state, and federal governments in their educational policies," the 1961 Convention called for federal financing of high quality public education "where local or state financing is demonstrably inadequate." Convention in 1964 urged the State Legislature to "raise the ceiling in the state aid formula to at least the state-wide average expenditure per child." It called on the people of the Diocese to "recognize and accept the need for increased state taxation if the urgent needs of our public education system are to be met." A 1978 resolution of Convention called for the development of classroom teacher accountability where pupils' performance fell short of expected levels.


Puerto Rico, Autonomy

In 1992 the Convention called for the amnesty for all "Puerto Rican prisoners of conscience (as defined by Amnesty International) and political prisoners" as well was for advocates of independence in exile, as a show of good faith in the process of self-determination for Puerto Rico.

 

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