FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 31, 2026
Contact: Team Saritha
Email: [email protected]
NEW YORK – Today, New York State Attorney General Candidate Saritha Komatireddy issued a statement following a viral street interview of an NYU student claiming she agrees with rapists being released from jail.
“This is outrageous. We need to be ringing the alarm bells about violence against women in New York. Here’s the reality – violence against women is up dramatically under Attorney General Letitia James.
By every reporting measure – victim counts, protective orders, strangulation charges, hotline volume – domestic violence has been getting worse since 2020:
There are more victims. Up from 31,480 to 44,300 in NYC (a 41% increase). Up from 47,547 to 55,314 in the rest of NYS (a 16% increase).
More orders of protection. Up from 165,613 to 241,351 (a 46% increase).
More offenders charged with strangulation. Up from 11,028 to 14,784 (an increase of 34%).
More calls to hotlines. Up from 263,096 to 274,933 (an increase of 4%).
All of this has happened under Letitia James’s watch. When she came into office, she supported catch-and-release policies that put criminals back into communities instead of putting them in jail. As a result, 83% of people who commit assault (including DV assaults) get released the same day.
The calls to hotlines might be even higher, but victims have lost hope: the comptroller’s audit released two weeks ago revealed that 20% of calls to the state’s domestic violence hotline never get answered. And I’ve listened as sheriffs, police chiefs, and crime victims across New York have told me in the last few months how our state’s catch-and-release policies make victims more afraid to report domestic violence because they know their attacker will be home in an hour.
Click here to look at the data yourself.
Our policies and politicians are failing to keep women safe. That is totally unacceptable. We need to prosecute domestic violence, we need to put offenders in jail, and we need to respond when victims call. Now more than ever, we need leadership that takes violence against women seriously. We can start by electing an Attorney General who will take this crisis seriously.”
###