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October 1, 2018

Republicans Try to Bolster Mass Incarceration, Advocates Say No

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On October 1, 2018, a broad coalition of criminal justice advocates, formerly incarcerated people and community members gathered in Albany before a NYS Senate Republican hearing on the State Parole Board’s conduct and the Governor’s restoration of voting rights to more than 24,000 people on parole.

Advocates Rallied to Call Out Senate Republican Leadership’s Racist Political Agenda, Interference in Independent Parole Board Decisions and Peoples’ Right to Vote

WATCH the short press conference here

WATCH Parole Preparation Project and RAPP testimony here

Scroll to bottom of this page to read written testimony by RAPP, Parole Preparation Project, NYS Board of Parole Chair Tina Stanford, Former Albany Police Chief Brendan Cox, the Osborne Association, the Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and NYDOCCS acting commissioner Anthony Annucci

Advocates stood in support of voting rights for all people and increases in Parole Board release rates despite strong opposition from some Republican Senators. Advocates called out the racist political tactics of many Senate Republicans attempting to demonize and attack currently and formerly incarcerated people for political purposes and before the November elections. Advocates said that Senate Republican-led hearings were not rooted in concerns for  “public safety” or crime victims, but aimed at mobilizing their voting base in battleground Senate districts and scaring their constituency. Advocates said that the Parole Board should release more incarcerated people and that all people on parole should have the opportunity to vote, regardless of their crime. They stood with representatives of victims and survivors of crime to make clear that mass incarceration does not support healing, safety or justice for crime survivors and victims.

“New York State Senate Republican leaders need to stop playing political football with the lives of currently and formerly incarcerated people,” said Jose Hamza Saldana, Community Organizer with the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign. “After 38 years in prison, four parole denials and having just voted for the first time in my life, these political optics are a direct attack on me, my family and all incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women. There are thousands of parole-eligible and community-ready people languishing in prisons across the state, some for over three decades. The Parole Board should release them instead of re-sentencing them to death by incarceration.” Saldana continued, “Parolees are returning citizens. We were once a part of the problem but today and for a long time we have been an integral part of the solution. We are committed to working with faith and community-based organizations to develop viable strategies to address the social ills plaguing our communities. We will educate, organize, and advocate to retain our fundamental right to vote, and with the support of the community, we will vote our elders home. Let not one more of our elders die in prison.”

“Too often the actions public officials take in the name of crime victims, particularly in the name of survivors of sexual and domestic violence, do not line up with the actual needs and desires of the majority of survivors, especially survivors from communities that are most at risk,” said Chrys Ballerano, Senior Director of the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault. “As an organization committed to healing and justice for all survivors and to truly ending sexual violence, NYSCASA recognizes that reliance on a biased and inherently reactive criminal justice system will not achieve these goals. Like many survivors, we would rather see public officials take action to ensure that survivors, their families, and communities have the comprehensive resources they need to heal and to thrive; that significant investments are made in community services and institutions that will prevent violence from happening in the first place; that people who commit harm are held accountable in a meaningful way that does not perpetuate a cycle of violence; and that people who commit harm have access to the services they need to stop committing harm.”

“As Ranking Member of the Senate Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee, I fully support Governor Cuomo’s decision to restore voting rights to those who have paid their debt to society,” said Senator Luis Sepulveda, who represents the 32nd District in the Bronx. “They also need more supportive programs – and opportunities – to help put and keep them on a stable and productive footing.” Sepulveda continued, “I also believe it is time for a major overhaul of the state’s Parole Board, which the New York Times in an in-depth investigative report called “a broken system.” To that end, I, the Senate Democratic Conference and the Ranking Member of the Senate Health Committee plan to hold a public forum this November in New York City on the issue of Parole Board reform, in which we hope to address a number of issues, including racial disparity of its membership and inadequate reporting of specific details in assessing its decisions.”

“The National Action Network was honored to have Gov. Cuomo announce his executive order, granting conditional voting rights to over 35,000 people on parole in the state of New York at our National Convention,” said Reverend Al Sharpton, President and Founder of National Action Network. “We have fought and will continue to fight for every person’s fundamental right to vote, despite their history in the justice system. Mass incarceration has only served as a smokescreen for systematized oppression and racist practices. Taking away someone’s right to a voice in our democracy only furthers their disempowerment in a system that has already misserved them for too long. As citizens of their communities, they deserve a right to their voice. Voting and fair parole practices are pillars of a fair restorative and rehabilitative system of justice.”

“The majority of incarcerated older adults have completed or even developed many progressive programs that promote education, constructive and critical thinking, and pro-social behaviors for the betterment of the community,” said James Royall, Re-Entry Advocate at Brooklyn Defender Services. “Rejoining their families and being part of the fabric of society is paramount to them. These are the very individuals who, after release, continue to make tremendous contributions to our society, whether as entrepreneurs, mentors, or loving family members. The state must accelerate the release of these elderly people and uphold the voting rights of all those who are justice-involved.”

“Parole is not an institution that belongs swept up in the ever changing political wind. It is an important tool that allows society to acknowledge the completion of an individual’s sentence, and their capacity to have used their time within the correctional facilities to reflect and change,” said Christopher E. Bromson, Executive Director of the Crime Victims Treatment Center and Co-Chair of the Downstate Coalition for Crime Victims Legislative Committee. “Just as victims have the capacity to heal, and can be offered support to move beyond the trauma of victimization, so too do offenders have the capacity to move beyond criminal behavior. Just as each survivor of a crime is an individual, so too is each incarcerated person. Policies barring the Parole Board from considering the important details of each individual case would exclude a vast number of survivors whose voices deserve to be heard. Many survivors view parole as a justified and appropriate end to an extremely painful experience.”

“These ill-timed hearings are clearly a political stunt orchestrated by Senate Republicans to score political points and to mobilize their voters prior to November’s general elections,” said State Senator Gustavo Rivera. “They are being held to cast a cloud of doubt against incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, even after they have paid their debt to society and have been rehabilitated. As a legislator who is fighting relentlessly to reform our criminal justice system, I will continue to champion common sense measures, such as my bill to implement discretionary release as part of the parole process, so that our State can truly improve the parole system for both victims and incarcerated individuals.”

“If people have served their time inside, then they deserve the rights afforded to them on the outside. Voting is one of those rights,” said Reverend Dr. Que English, Founder, NYC Clergy Roundtable. “The system once again is looking for ways to keep our people in bondage while free. Instead of looking for ways to keep people from their rights, let’s work to improve and enhance opportunities, education, housing, and other important supports.”

“This week, the current majority in the State Senate will hold hearings to reinforce their position that the Parole Board releases too many people. It is a sad day when elected officials call a system broken because parole board members are increasingly fulfilling their sworn duty to uphold the law. Instead of this politically-driven attack, our legislators could work towards a more effective—and just—system,” said Liz Gaynes, president and CEO of the Osborne Association. “We must fill the seven empty seats on the Parole Board so that overloaded Commissioners can thoroughly consider the unique circumstances in each case; digitize records so that Commissioners need not travel long distances to review a single copy of paper records, in some cases just minutes before a hearing that is held by video-conference; and move to in-person parole hearings that are fully staffed by three commissioners. Our current televised but not digitized process makes it even more difficult to assess fully the person before them, leading to thousands of people facing repeated denials despite the wishes of prosecutors, sentencing judges, and in many cases, the victims themselves.”

“The politics of fear and the false connection between race, dangerousness, and criminality have served as obstacles to parole justice for far too long,” said Anthony Thompson, Director of New York University Law Center on Race Inequality and the Law. “We should be working to change that paradigm, and implementing reforms that help get people who have paid their debt to society and changed their lives for the better out of prison and successfully reintegrated into their communities. Unreasonably curtailing parole releases and silencing the political voices of those who have been released from prison is bad policy, guaranteed to reproduce the unfairness and injustice we should all stand against.”

“The Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC) supports people who are on parole to have the right to vote, and urges that New York release more people on parole,” said Victor Pate, Community Organizer with the Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement. “People who have served their time and been released on parole are New York citizens who should have an opportunity to vote for the representatives who make decisions affecting their and others’ lives. Regarding releases, for far too long the Parole Board has repeatedly denied release to those who have demonstrated their low risk, accomplishments and transformation, and readiness for release to the outside community. The Board needs to look at the people who sit before them and base their release decisions on evidence-based, forward-looking factors.”

“Denying me and others who have been justice-involved the right to vote does not help build communities,” said Edwin Santana, Campaign Leader with JustLeadershipUSA. “Restoring voting rights to people on parole provides a voice to those who have been disenfranchised by mass incarceration, overwhelmingly people of color. While Senate Republicans claim that the Parole Board has been “lenient,” anyone paying attention knows the Board is finally taking baby steps in the right direction, but still has miles to go. As a person who lived through multiple parole denials, I have experienced their total disregard for rehabilitation and sheer uselessness of the system Senate Republicans are looking to re-impose. I say let’s invest in forgiveness and healing in order to give our community the nurturing it needs to grow strong.”

“We need to trust our Parole Board professionals to release individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety,” said Chief Brendan Cox (Ret.) Albany Police Department. “We want them out of prison, contributing to society instead of costing us $100 a day that could be reinvested into programs that prevent crime.”

“Parole must be decided based on criteria such as rehabilitation, remorse, and growth,” said Allen Roskoff, President of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club. “Republican Senators’ desire to base parole release solely on revenge and retribution is wrong. It shows a lack of understanding of human potential and degrades the value of human life and the very concept of humanity.”

“It is disgraceful that Senate Republicans continue to oppose the restoration of voting rights for people on parole,” said Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY. “Do Senate Republicans also think Dean Skelos should be denied the right to vote when he’s eventually paroled? Sheldon Silver? People on parole in New York deserve the right to vote, just like they do in many other states. It’s time for New York to catch up.”

“Limiting opportunities for people to fully engage in society based on their past mistakes makes little sense and is among the last vestiges of race-based voter suppression,” said Avery Bizzell, Community Organizer with Community Service Society. “Voting is the bedrock of democracy, the voice of the people. For individuals to successfully thrive in our communities, they must have the opportunity to vote and be fully empowered stakeholders.”

MEDIA CONTACT: Dave George, ddgeorge23@gmail.com, (631) 885-3565

Watch the press conference here

Full Albany press statement here

Read our press statement opposing the Senate Republicans’ Long Island hearing on Oct. 2, 2018

Written Testimony of Jose Hamza Saldana, RAPP

Written Testimony of Michelle Lewin, Parole Preparation Project

Written Testimony of Tina Stanford, Chair, NYS Board of Parole

Written Testimony of Elizabeth Gaynes of the Osborne Association

Written Testimony of Chrys Ballerano of the NYS Coalition Against Sexual Violence

Written Testimony of Chief Brendan Cox (Ret.) of the Albany, NY Police Dept.

Written Testimony of Anthony Annucci, Acting Commissioner, NYS Dept. of Corrections and Community Supervision

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Filed Under: slideshow, Uncategorized Tagged With: aging in prison, aging prisoners, elder incarceration, elderly prisoners, felon disenfranchisement, older prisoners, parole, Parole Justice, parole reform, voting rights

January 28, 2018

Former Commissioner: “Let Common Sense in, Let the Aging Out”

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By Barbara Treen, Retired NY Board of Parole Commissioner •

The disgrace of mass incarceration in the United States continues to be critically commented upon by academics, analysts, criminologist, practitioners, and providers. Still, with all the condemnation and forward-thinking formulas that would lead to warehousing fewer people, nothing has changed for the aged locked in by parole denials. I have a ‘best practice’ to suggest that would surely make a difference: common sense!

After a career in criminal justice, I am now a retiree of 12 years as a commissioner on the New York Parole Board. I now am an advocate for the aging and long-term incarcerated.  I follow the promises and the politics, the conferences announcing reform (bail, drug treatment, modifying stop-and-frisk) at the front door to prison, while the appeals to denials at the back door pile up in the office of the Parole Board’s counsel.

The new solutions are suggested in the language of regulations, guidelines, and policies attempting to legally employ humanity and change our culture of punishment. What about gut instinct? What would it take to convince the Board that an incarcerated person devoured by dementia, who can’t walk straight, should be released? What does it take to figure out that a crime committed by an 18-year-old should not stick to the transformed 62-year-old? What does it take to release an applicant meeting the board twenty or more years beyond what the court prescribed?

While decision-making has been shored up by guardrails, human behavior occurs through feelings. And this ingredient is what this Board needs to allow in their deliberations—and to recognize in others.

I realize that emotional decision-making is not professional and can go either way. But there is room within the guidelines and the written word to articulate what rules don’t spell out: sincerity, transformation, time, physical condition, or on the other hand suggestions of public risk. Is this not why we have people doing this job rather than computers tallying the score? And this is why we should abandon decisions made by camera rather than personal appearances. When I was on the Board and sitting at a business meeting, a most conservative colleague stood up and declared that we all used gut instinct as part of our reasoning (surely he believed that we were all behavioralists and not cops). There was a gasp followed by silence in the room. This was heresy and this was never spoken about again…until now.  Intuition is compatible with legalese; let in common sense and begin letting out the aging.

Barbara Hanson Treen, Comm (ret)
Author of “Geranium Justice” January 27, 2018

Note: a version of this article later appeared in the Albany Times-Union as “Let common sense in and let aged prisoners out,” January 31, 2018

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Filed Under: article, slideshow Tagged With: aging in prison, aging prisoners, elder parole, geriatric parole, older people in prison, older prisoners, parole denials

January 11, 2018

Governor Cuomo Proposes “Geriatric Parole.” RAPP Responds.

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The Release Aging People in Prison/RAPP Campaign believes that Governor Cuomo’s calls to reform New York’s criminal legal system are only a baby step in the right direction. While we acknowledge his proposal to expand medical parole for incarcerated older people with debilitating health conditions (his “geriatric parole” bill), his proposal has serious flaws. Medical parole is a rarely used, limited, and at times exclusionary program that has led far too many people who pose no risk to public safety to die in prison of illnesses that could otherwise be adequately and safely cared for in the community. The governor’s bill still excludes whole groups of incarcerated people only because of the crime for which they were convicted. While we hope that the governor’s proposal promotes the release of more older people, including those with chronic, hard-to-manage conditions, and is a catalyst for the expanded use of medical parole for all eligible people, it must be amended if it is to be truly effective—and just.

In addition, the governor’s proposal only affects sick people. While some incarcerated older people are sick, many others aren’t. Their wellness should not limit opportunities for release. Older people should not have to become ill in order to be considered worthy of returning home. People should be able to come home before they’re stricken with a debilitating illness. As the crisis of older people in prison continues to worsen and the population of older people has reached an all-time high of 10,337 people—more than 20 percent of the entire state prison population—much more is needed to end the mass incarceration of older people in New York.

RAPP believes that the Parole Board should presumptively release all parole-eligible older people, unless there is clear evidence that they pose a current risk to public safety. If the Parole Board is unwilling to do this on their own, then the governor and legislature should legislate this change. That is why we support and urge the legislature to pass Assembly Bill A7546, which would ensure that people who pose little if any risk to public safety be released on parole.

We also believe that older people who are not parole-eligible, serving prison terms that amount to death sentences, should be given a “second look”—an opportunity for  parole consideration. Such sentences were draconian and flawed to begin with, and pose no benefits to public safety.So we urge the passage of an assembly bill that would give people who are 55 or older and have served at least 15 years a shot at parole.

RAPP’s priorities require political will from the governor and all branches of state government across the political spectrum. We hope that he listens to the statewide community of formerly incarcerated leaders, families, and concerned New Yorkers who seek peace and justice. Taking meaningful and expanded action to release older people in prison will prevent death, despair, aging, and illness behind bars, and under Governor Cuomo’s leadership, make New York a true leader in the struggle to end mass incarceration.

Cover photo by RAPP member Dan Rous

Join us to push for release of older people from New York prisons—a big step towards ending mass incarceration. See RAPPCampaign.com/about and RAPPCampaign.com/events for ways to get with us. Follow us on Twitter: @RAPPCampaign

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Filed Under: article, slideshow, Uncategorized Tagged With: aging incarcerated people, aging prisoners, elder parole, geriatric parole, older adults, prison justice

August 2, 2017

More Compassion Needed

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Medical parole, along with other release mechanisms, should be used more widely to reduce the population of older people in the New York’s prisons, said New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a report in April 2017. Now Congress is saying something similar to the federal Bureau of Prisons:

Congress Wants to Know Why the BOP Won’t Let Elderly Prisoners Go Home to Die

“Compassionate release” is an excellent tool that the BOP refuses to use.

(From the “Hit and Run” blog on reason.com)

Mike Riggs

July 28, 2017

For years, federal prisoners and their advocates have begged the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to shorten the sentences of elderly and terminally ill offenders using a provision called “compassionate release.”

With the stroke of a pen, the BOP has the power to release men like Bruce Harrison, sentenced in 1994 to 50 years for delivering cocaine and marijuana at the behest of undercover federal agents. Now 65, Harrison suffers from a heart condition and has neuropathy in his feet that makes it difficult to walk. His official release date? 2037.

Then there are prisoners like Michael Hodge, who was sentenced in 2000 to 20 years for distributing marijuana while in possession of a firearm. Hodge developed pancreatic cancer while in prison and requested to be released so he could die in the company of family. That request was denied, and Hodge died behind bars in 2015, according to the Washington Post.

In 2013, the DOJ Office of Inspector General encouraged the BOP to send these kinds of prisoners home. Two years later, the office released a report that found “aging inmates engage in fewer misconduct incidents while incarcerated and have a lower rate of re-arrest once released.” In 2016, the U.S. Sentencing Commission went so far as to expand eligibility for the program in hopes the BOP would use it more.

But the BOP has largely ignored those recommendations. Yesterday, Congress demanded that the BOP explain why it continues to incarcerate geriatric and terminally ill prisoners who pose no threat to public safety and are unlikely to commit new crimes upon their release.

In a report accompanying the 2018 appropriations bill, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) ordered the BOP to turn over reams of data about the compassionate release program. Including:

  • the steps BOP has taken to implement the suggestions of the BOP Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Sentencing Commission
  • a detailed explanation as to which recommendations the BOP has not adopted, and why
  • the number of prisoners who applied for compassionate release in the last five years, as well as how many requests were granted, how many were denied, and why
  • how much time elapsed between each request and a decision from the BOP
  • the number of prisoners who died while waiting for the BOP to rule on their application for compassionate release

Only 10 percent of America’s prisoners are in federal prisons, but it is an increasingly old and sick population due to the disproportionately long sentences tied to federal drug offenses. As of June 2017, BOP facilities held 34,769 prisoners over the age of 51. More than 10,000 of those prisoners are over the age of 60.

Elderly prisoners pose financial and human rights problems.

“In fiscal year 2014, the BOP spent $1.1 billion on inmate medical care, an increase of almost 30 percent in 5 years,” BOP Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz wrote in prepared testimony to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. “One factor that has significantly contributed to the increase in medical costs is the sustained growth of an aging inmate population.” In its 2015 report, the DOJ OIG determined that facilities with the oldest populations spent $10,114 annually on medical care per prisoner, compared to $1,916 per prisoner in facilities with the youngest populations.

“It is difficult to climb to the upper bunk, walk up stairs, wait outside for pills, take showers in facilities without bars and even hear the commands to stand up for count or sit down when you’re told,” Human Rights Watch’s Jamie Fellner told the Washington Post. “Prisons simply are not physically designed to accommodate the infirmities that come with age.”

Shelby’s letter gives the BOP 60 days from the passage of the appropriations bill to submit its data to the committee.

“Elderly and sick prisoners cost taxpayers the most and threaten us the least, and there’s no good reason they should stay locked up or die behind bars because bureaucrats can’t or won’t let them go home to their families,” Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said in a statement. “It’s time for someone to get to the bottom of why the BOP’s answer is always no on compassionate release.”

This reporter worked for FAMM from 2013-2015

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Filed Under: article, slideshow, Uncategorized Tagged With: aging prison population, aging prisoners, compassionate release, elders in prison, incarcerated elders, incarceration of aging people, older people in prison

January 3, 2017

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

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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.

A version of this editorial appears in print on January 3, 2017, on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Why Keep the Old and Sick Behind Bars?

RAPP adds: In New York State, the parole board must release more of the 10,140 incarcerated people aged 50 and older. Since 2000, this population has grown by 98%, creating a human rights nightmare and wasting public resources. Justice and common sense demand, if the risk is low, let them go.

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Filed Under: article, press, slideshow Tagged With: Aging People in Prison, aging prisoners, elders, incarcerated elders, medical parole, New York Times, older prisoners, parole, prison healthcare, sick prisoners, terminally ill

May 24, 2016

The Prison Population We Should Talk About Releasing

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President Barack Obama has made reducing the prison population one of his top agenda items during his final term in office. – AP/David Goldman, JUSTICE

Given his recent granting of clemency to 58 prisoners, many of whom were serving time on federal drug offenses, the President has made it clear he doesn’t want non-violent drug offenders serving long sentences. He’s also made the case that reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenders is an important part of reform and cutting the financial cost of the U.S. criminal justice system.

But criminal justice researchers say that non-violent offenders are not the prison population we should be focusing on when it comes to long-term criminal justice reform.

“The president is significantly mistaken,” Stanford University Law Professor Robert Weisberg told ATTN:.

For successful long-term criminal justice reform, the U.S. needs to consider releasing violent offenders who are no longer dangerous, even those who have been convicted of murder, said Weisberg, who is also the co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.

“The percentage of people who have committed non-violent drug offenses is not that many to be the solution for criminal justice reform,” said Weisberg.

Of the U.S. prison population, only 17 percent of inmates in 2010 were incarcerated for primary drug offenses, according to research by Fordham University Professor John Pfaff. He wrote in research published in 2015 that the focus should be on violent crime not primary drug offenders.

“The policy implications here are clear,” Pfaff wrote. “Reducing the admissions of drug offenders will not meaningfully reduce prison populations.”

This does not mean that addressing prison sentences for non-violent drug offenses isn’t important, but Pfaff said that those offenses should not be the only focus and they don’t make up the majority of people in prison.

People who have committed drug offenses make up more of the new admissions to prisons, but nearly half of inmates incarcerated are there for violent crimes, according to the Brookings Institute.

Basically, the research suggests that if we want to effectively reduce the 2.2 million people in the U.S. prison population, we have to consider releasing violent offenders.

But aren’t all violent offenders dangerous to the public?

Actually, there’s research that suggests a significant amount of them are not.

Weisberg said that violent offenders middle aged and older who committed a crime in their 20’s and 30’s tend to age out of their crime.

Elderly Prisoners

“The most interesting example of people who should be considered for release and unquestionably committed violent crimes, but are not dangerous anymore, are elderly people,” said Weisberg.

A 2011 report by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, which followed 860 California murderers released since 1995, found that only five of the murderers were convicted of new felonies in the 15 years after release. None of them returned to prison for “life-term” crimes. That’s a 1 percent rate of return to prison for the murderers in this study compared to the nearly 50 percent return to California state prison for the broader prison population.

So why were these murderers so well-behaved after their release?

Age is mostly likely the reason. Not only are most violent crimes committed by people under 30, but even the criminal behavior that continues after that age declines drastically after age 40 and even more so after age 50, according to the report. The average age in the 2011 study for California inmates serving life in prison who were granted parole was 49.9 years old. This suggests that by the time these “lifers” made parole, they had “aged out” of the violent stage in their lives.

However living in the outside world after a prison sentence is not easy. After a recent increase in parolee releases under California Gov. Jerry Brown, and an uptick in returns to jail for some of those parolees, some wondered whether former inmates are prepared to be successful. “We’re talking about people with track records of the most serious and violent crime … and we’re saying, ‘Good luck out there, do well,'” Christine Ward, executive director of Crime Victims Action Alliance, told the Los Angeles Times.

Former inmates struggle to find jobs, have a higher likelihood of divorce, and their children have a higher rate of mental health problems and school drop out rates, according to the Obama administration.

Weisberg said the difficulty of navigating society with a criminal record could contribute to re-offenses.

“It’s plausible the longer you keep someone in prison, the longer you’re wrecking their chances for legal life on the outside,” he said.

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Filed Under: article, slideshow Tagged With: aging behind bars, aging in prison, aging population, aging prisoners, grandparents in prison, incarcerated elders, seniors

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