press

May 12, 2017

N.Y. must lift punitive practices of state’s parole board

By Mujahid Farid, Release Aging People in Prison/RAPP
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Times Union Plus – Opinion & Commentary

Across the nation there is growing concern that much of the progress made in the past five years educating the federal government on the harms associated with mass incarceration will be significantly turned back. Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency fuels that concern.

However, Trump’s counter-progressive platform does not have the power to silence a movement whose time has come. Because the vast majority of incarcerated individuals are in state prison systems, not the federal system, the primary focal point for challenging mass incarceration must be at the local and state level, and at policies championed by so-called progressive politicians that long precede Trump.

Nationwide and local coalitions of formerly incarcerated men and women have been pushing a bold vision for justice and transformation for decades. Notably, in New York state, organizations and groups have been hard at work, creating and developing coalitions and coming out of their silos to address the crisis of a punishment paradigm that has threatened the health and well-being of New Yorkers and their families and communities since the Rockefeller administration.

Today, groups like the Challenging Incarceration Coalition, which is made up of more than 60 organizations and issue-based campaigns, are demanding that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and leaders of the state Legislature join the movement to transform New York’s racist carceral state and the rise of the newly emboldened conservative right by championing policy that ends mass incarceration, state violence and torture, racism and identity-based oppression, and empowers all New Yorkers, not just those who are convicted of nonviolent drug offenses.

As a start, the governor could take steps to uproot the punitive practices of the state Board of Parole, which continues to annually deny release to thousands of people — many of whom are elders — despite the incredible extent to which they have transformed over time.

I myself was denied by the board nine times, adding an extra 18 years to my original 15 years-to-life sentence, despite having already earned four college degrees — two bachelor’s and two master’s — before my first interview with the board.

To continue to deny people parole based on one immutable factor — the nature of the original offense — without regard for their life-changing transformations, is to follow the lead of the new president, not combat him. State and local organizations and individuals will not abandon inclusive reform efforts until the governor and Legislature act accordingly by changing the composition of the Board of Parole; passing the Safe and Fair Evaluations Parole Act (A.4353/S.3095A) which, among other things, requires that incarcerated people who are denied parole be told what corrective actions they need to take; and championing incarceration-related policy that ensures New York remains a steadfast leader in the dawn of a new and uncertain day.

The on-the-ground work being done by organizers and advocates on the state and local levels will not be uprooted by a new presidential administration, but it remains to be seen whether it will be embraced by the governor and his peers.

If the elected leaders of our state wish to rout the rise of the nationally occupying radical right, then they must join the local movement seeking to penetrate its punitive roots.

PDF version of this commentary.
Link to commentary on Times Union website (subscription required).

January 3, 2017

New York Times editorial: “Why Keep the Old and Sick Behind Bars?”

By the New York Times Editorial Board, January 3, 2017

Anyone who visits a prison these days might be shocked to see what looks more like a nursing home with bars and metal detectors. Prisoners put away years ago under the wave of draconian sentencing are now turning gray and frail, suffering from heart disease and hypertension and feeling the effects of Alzheimer’s and other age-related illnesses.

Corrections officials once thought they had time to prepare for this, but something unexpected happened. Federal data shows that prison inmates age more rapidly than people on the outside — because of stress, poor diet and lack of medical care — so much so that their infirmities qualify them as “elderly” at the age of 50.

This problem is overwhelming the state and federal prison systems’ ability to manage it. And unless prisons adopt a common-sense approach of releasing older inmates who present no danger to the public, this costly group could soon account for a full third of the population behind bars.

Granting early release to sick, elderly inmates with families who want to care for them would be the humane thing to do. But it also makes good policy sense, given that they are far less likely than the young to commit new crimes. For example, a 2012 study by the American Civil Liberties Union documented that criminal activity drops sharply as people age. In New York, the study found, just 4 percent of prisoners 65 or older return to prison with a new conviction within three years of release; only 7 percent of those who are 50 to 64 do so. In contrast, 16 percent of those 49 or younger return.

A 2015 report on the federal prison system published by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General offers a sense of what managing aging inmates will cost if compassionate-release programs aren’t expanded. Older prisoners are already more expensive than younger ones; treating the sick is more costly in prisons. The costs will grow as prisons are forced to hire more and more people to help elderly inmates feed, bathe and dress themselves or to escort them on trips to see medical specialists. Some elderly inmates will also require costly infrastructure improvements, like elevators and wheelchair-accessible cells, bathrooms and passageways.

The inspector general’s report also found that the re-arrest rate for older inmates was relatively low compared with the rate for young inmates and said that many older inmates were good candidates for early release. But federal policies “limit the number of aging inmates who can be considered for early release and, as a result, few are actually released early,” the report explained. This problem is echoed at the state level, where eligibility for compassionate release is so strictly defined that parole boards almost never consider granting it.

Prisons, of course, cannot release people based solely on age. But the states and federal government can expand medical parole programs under which far too few terminally ill and physically disabled people are now released. In addition, parole boards across the country can screen older inmates for release using widely accepted measures to determine whether or not the inmate poses a risk. The best answer for the future is for state legislatures to keep moving away from the disproportionately harsh sentencing laws that brought us to this point in the first place.

September 6, 2016

False Hope and a Needless Death Behind Bars (NY Times Editorial)

New York Times, The Opinion Pages
September 6, 2016
By Jesse Wegman, Editorial Observer

On July 26, John MacKenzie went before the parole board at the Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, N.Y., and made the case, once again, for his freedom. He had been locked up since 1975 for shooting and killing a Long Island police officer, Matthew Giglio, during a bungled robbery attempt. His sentence was 25 years to life — the maximum under state law.

On Aug. 2, he learned that the board had voted 2 to 1 against him. It was the 10th time in 16 years that he had been denied parole.

Later that day, he sent a handwritten letter to his daughter Denise, saying that “they’re hell bent on keeping me in prison” and “I don’t believe I’ll last much longer.”

On Aug. 4, another inmate found Mr. MacKenzie hanging by the neck from a bedsheet tied to the window bars of his cell. He was 70.

John MacKenzie was no ordinary prisoner. In the more than 40 years he spent behind bars, he became one of the most respected inmates in the state’s penal system. He had a spotless disciplinary record. He took full responsibility for the murder of Mr. Giglio. He earned degrees in business and the arts. He started a program to give victims the opportunity to speak directly to inmates about the impact of their crimes. The state’s own risk-assessment program found that he posed little to no risk of re-offending. Prison guards, judges, clergy members and prosecutors wrote letters supporting him.

None of this seemed to matter to the parole board. Because of the seriousness of his crime, one denial said, his release would “undermine respect for the law.” Another referred to “significant community opposition.” The wording would vary, but the message was always the same: Mr. MacKenzie’s sentence, which appeared to give him a real chance at freedom after 25 years, was a sham. No matter what he did to atone for his crime, he was never getting out.

Some see this as a just result, particularly law enforcement groups, which steadfastly opposed Mr. MacKenzie’s release. But New York criminal law provides for the possibility of parole, which is based on the idea that people can change.

Under state law, the parole board is required to weigh a prisoner’s entire history: his degree of remorse, his behavior behind bars and the likelihood that he will be able to live lawfully outside prison. Those factors never got more than a cursory mention, at best, when the board denied Mr. MacKenzie’s requests. In May, a State Supreme Court justice, Maria Rosa, held the board in contempt for failing to give any reason for denying Mr. MacKenzie parole other than the nature of his crime. Justice Rosa wrote that “if parole isn’t granted to this petitioner, when and under what circumstances would it be granted?” She ordered the board to hold a new hearing, with different board members. The state appealed that order. The case was still pending when Mr. MacKenzie killed himself.

Certainly crime victims and police officers should have a voice in the parole process, but they should not have a veto. Otherwise, parole is a meaningless promise.

Some years ago, Mr. MacKenzie wrote an essay about the frustrations of living at the whim of parole commissioners. “If society wishes to rehabilitate as well as punish wrongdoers through imprisonment,” he wrote, then “society — through its lawmakers — must bear the responsibility of tempering justice with mercy. Giving a man legitimate hope is a laudable goal; giving him false hope is utterly inhuman.”

A version of this editorial appears in print on September 6, 2016, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: False Hope and a Needless Death Behind Bars.

For more on John MacKenzie, see RAPPCampaign.com/press

June 3, 2016

Longtime Prisoner Mohaman Koti Dies at 89, 2 Months After Release

June 3, 2016
Headlines, Democracy Now!

An elderly New York prisoner who won wide support for his freedom has died just two months after he was released to a nursing home in Staten Island. Mohaman Koti was 89 years old. In 1978, Mr. Koti was convicted of attempted murder after he shot a New York City police officer during a traffic stop in which he says the officer drew his gun first. The officer later recovered, and Mr. Koti was offered a plea deal of seven-and-a-half years. When he demanded a trial, he was sentenced to 25 years to life. (Watch Democracy Now! coverage.)

Mr. Koti spent the next several decades mentoring young male prisoners. A corrections officer at Sing Sing said he had never met anyone so well respected on both sides of the bars. Ten years after Mr. Koti was eligible for parole, he was profiled in a 2013 New York Times column about prisoners over the age of 60 who are denied release based on their original crime, instead of an accurate assessment of the threat they pose. It described a parole board hearing where commissioners had to repeat questions to Mr. Koti because he was hard of hearing. He suffered from several medical problems and used a wheelchair, but he was still found to be at risk of committing another crime.

Mr. Koti was ultimately granted parole in September 2014, when a judge ruled the previous denials were irrational and called for a new hearing. Then, because of a pending bank robbery charge from the time of his arrest, he was ordered to serve an additional year in prison at a federal medical center in Butner, North Carolina.

Mr. Koti was finally freed in March. His longtime lawyer and friend Susan Tipograph told Democracy Now!, “The kind of life Koti lived when he got out—confined to a nursing home because he was not able to care for himself—shows that it was ludicrous to think he would have posed a threat to society all these years.”

June 21, 2014

NY1 Interviews RAPP Campaign Founder, Mujahid Farid

NY1 featured Release Aging People in Prison, with Mujahid Farid, Larry White, and Correctional Association of NY Executive Director Soffiyah Elijah. The community agrees: release our elders. Watch the video.

April 25, 2014

RAPP Joins the Community Mourning Eddie Ellis

Edwin ‘Eddie’ Ellis Passes

Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) joins the Center for NuLeadership and the entire community in mourning the passing of Eddie Ellis. Here is the notice of his death by the Center for NuLeadership.

Edwin “Eddie” Ellis, 1941-2014

By Kyung Ji Rhee on July 24, 2014 in News and Latest

originally published by EastBrooklyn.com

EastBrooklyn has learned that Edwin “Eddie” Ellis (72) has passed. Although, details of Ellis’ passing are unconfirmed, it is believed that Ellis may have passed away in the early morning hours of July 24, 2014, from a heart attack.

Speaking of the news, longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Divine Pryor, released this statement.

“Dear friends and family:

It is with a very heavy heart that I share this news with you. Eddie Ellis, our fearless, tireless and loving leader and warrior passed away this morning.

So much needs to be said, of course, but for now, I want to thank you for your words of support and love. We will be in touch with updates soon. Please direct all inquiries to dpryor@centerfornuleadership.org for now. Thank you.”

Beloved by many, Ellis was born in 1941. He became nationally known as a staunch prison reformer and advocate of the non-traditional approach to the “criminal punishment system” Ellis’ take on the criminal justice system. Ellis was a Black Panther and served 25 years in prison- being one of the last people to remain in Attica after its famed rebellion. Back in 1979, Ellis was one of a small group of incarcerated men who berthed the Seven Neighborhood Study, a project that gave spotlight to the phenomenon of New York State prisons being filled up disproportionately by Black and Latino men from just seven neighborhoods in New York City.

Ellis, founder of the nonprofit Center for Nuleadership On Urban Solutions was perhaps most famous for his distinctive, throaty voice every Saturday mid-afternoon on the radio show “On The Count”, a popular weekly radio show on WBAI that prides itself on being the city’s only show about, for, and produced by people who were formerly incarcerated.

However, Ellis had not personally been on air since late 2013. Fiercely private in his personal affairs, Ellis had been silently suffering from a long bout with chronic conditions, suffered since his time at Attica, which frequently sent him to and from hospitals.

Ellis earned his undergraduate degree and post-graduate degree as a theologian. Ellis was considered by many professionals and advocates working in and out of New York criminal justice system, as a rare, credible and legitimate appraiser of its dollar for dollar value. So much so that several political luminaries, like former Governor NYS Eliot Spitzer and former US President George W. Bush’s domestic policy advisor,continued to tap Ellis for his expertise to serve in consultant and advisory roles.

In, 2011, Harvard University’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice recognized Ellis’s life long commitment to reforming America’s punishing criminal justice system.

Ellis’ passing comes in the midst of efforts by his colleagues to edify his non-traditional approach to criminal punishment system in the form of The Eddie Ellis Academy for Human Justice.

February 18, 2014

New York Times Editorial: “…release older prisoners…”

Inmates are repeatedly denied parole long after they have served their minimum sentence, not because of misbehavior or any concern for public safety but because of the “seriousness” of the original offense. As one former chairman of the board told The New York Law Journal last year, “If the Parole Board doesn’t like the crime, you are not going to get out.”

This attitude may be predictable from a body made up of political appointees, but that doesn’t make it just or protective of public safety.

In 2011, legislators amended the state law to require that the board consider a prisoner’s future along with his or her past. So far it hasn’t made much of a difference. While New York has reduced its overall prison population by more than 15,000 since 2000, release rates — the board granted just over one-third of the 16,000 applications it considered in 2012 — have actually gone down.

Prisoners’ rights advocates and those who have gone through the process — which involves a brief, often intimidating interview — say parole decisions are inconsistent and largely unrelated to what a person has accomplished while incarcerated. Recently, some state judges have been scrutinizing, and reversing, the board’s denials, which use boilerplate language and in some cases fail even to acknowledge an inmate’s Compas results.

In December, the board finally complied with the 2011 amendment by proposing new regulations to guide its work, but it continues to resist any meaningful change.

Its obstinacy is all the more lamentable because programs like Compas have been proved to work. At least 15 states have used similar data-based risk-assessment tools in recent years, with good results. A three-year study in New Jersey found that parolees were 36 percent less likely to return to prison for new crimes than inmates who served full sentences. The key was post-release supervision: parolees get it; those who “max out” do not.

The study also suggested reducing the number of parolees sent back to prison for technical violations, like a missed appointment or failed drug test. In New York, such violations account for three out of four parole revocations.

Lasting reform of New York’s parole system will require a fundamental reworking of both the board’s process and its culture. For low-risk inmates, early release into parole should be the default, and the board should have to articulate a good reason to keep them locked up.

If the board is worried that some parolees might commit new crimes, it could start by releasing older inmates, who represent one of the fastest-growing and most-expensive segments of the prison population and yet are by far the least likely to reoffend. (Elderly prisoners convicted of first-degree murder have among the lowest recidivism rates of all.)

For parole to have any value, it must serve as a meaningful incentive to personal growth and rehabilitation. “No one can ever change the past,” a prison chaplain wrote to the board last month. “But we don’t have to remain prisoners of it.”