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New York
Political repression plays out state by state — shaped by local institutions, prosecutors, and movements for defense. These are the documented political prisoners and cases the census holds for New York.
859Documented
24In custody
787Released
2Awaiting trial
Eras of repression in New York
Where New York’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.
1950s 137
1910s 137
1970s 87
1960s 87
1980s 81
1930s 65
Documented cases
859 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.
Bruce Dancis
Released
On December 14, 1966, 18-year-old Cornell University SDS activist Bruce Dancis tore his draft card into four p...
Benjamin J. Davis Jr.
Released
ONE OF TWELVE COMMUNISTS SENTENCED UNDER DENNIS V. UNITED STATES:
Bejamin J. Davis Jr., a chairman of the comm...
Deyanna Davis
Drove SUV into a state trooper during Buffalo protest (2020). Sentence: 30 months state prison. Verified via p...
Dorothy Day
Released
Dorothy Day was a journalist, organizer, and the co-founder, with Peter Maurin, of the Catholic Worker Movemen...
Giovanni De Cecca
Released
Giovanni De Cecca Italian-American Bible Student responsible for foreign-language distribution of Watch Tower...
Peter DeMott
Released
Peter DeMott was a Catholic Worker, Vietnam War veteran, and prolific Plowshares activist. In December 1980, j...
Floyd Dell
Released
Greenwich Village novelist, Chicago Renaissance critic, and managing editor of The Masses (1914-17). Indicted...
Eugene Dennis
Released
Eugene Dennis was the General Secretary of the Communist Party USA. In 1947 he refused to appear before the Ho...
Dr. Rafil Dhafir
Released
Dr. Rafil A. Dhafir was an American Iraqi-born physician, who founded the charity Help the Needy, to respond t...
Andrew Dmytryshyn
Released
Andrew Dmytryshyn was a leader of the Ukrainian American Fraternal Union, a section of the International Worke...
Joseph Patrick Doherty
Released
Provisional IRA volunteer born January 20, 1955 in the New Lodge area of Belfast. Interned without charge at a...
Jack Donald
Released
Jack Donald was one of the Buffalo, New York workers jailed in 1930 for demanding "work or wages" in the unemp...
Steven Donziger
Released
Steven Robert Donziger is an American environmental and human-rights lawyer who represented Indigenous peoples...
Mackenzie Drechsler
Released
Mackenzie Drechsler, 19, of Ontario NY, charged June 30, 2020 with arson for the May 30, 2020 burning of two v...
Michelle Duclos
Released
Michelle Duclos was a Montreal broadcaster and freelance writer associated with the Quebec independence moveme...
Anne Dunham
Released
Age 23 at indictment; native of Pelham, NY, graduate of Ursuline Academy who attended Marymount College and th...
William F. Dunne
Released
William F. Dunne was a veteran labor journalist and editor of the Daily Worker and a founding member of the Am...
Max Eastman
Released
Max Eastman was a poet, journalist, and the editor of The Masses, the radical New York socialist literary maga...
Becky Edelsohn
Released
Becky Edelsohn (born Rebecca Edelsohn) was an American anarchist agitator. Born in 1892 in Riga in the Russian...
David Eichel
Released
David Eichel was a Jewish socialist absolutist from New York's Lower East Side, one of three Eichel brothers w...
Julius Eichel
Released
Julius Eichel, David's brother, was a Jewish socialist absolutist imprisoned during World War I after refusing...
Gerhart Eisler
In Exile
Gerhart Eisler was a German-born Communist and former Comintern functionary whom the House Un-American Activit...
Harry Eisman
Released
Harry Eduardovich Eisman, born in Kishinev (Chisinau), then in the Russian Empire, was a Bronx schoolboy and Y...
Roberto Elia
Released
Roberto Elia was an Italian anarchist printer arrested in New York in early 1920 during the Palmer Raids and h...
Institutions in New York
Prisons, jails, and detention centers in New York that appear in the census’s case files.
Ellis Island Immigration StationNew York, New York
184 cases
Manhattan House of Detention (the Tombs)New York, New York
17 cases
Sing Sing Correctional FacilityOssining, New York
14 cases
Attica Correctional FacilityAttica, New York
13 cases
Metropolitan Correctional CenterNew York, New York
11 cases
MDC BrooklynBrooklyn, New York
9 cases
Metropolitan Correctional Center, New YorkNew York, New York
9 cases
Blackwell's Island PenitentiaryNew York, New York
8 cases