Andrew Cuomo

August 14, 2018

NYS Parole Board report shows justice still unfulfilled

August 14, 2018: Along with the Parole Preparation Project, RAPP today released our latest report, The New York State Parole Board: Failures in Staffing and Performance.

“No one can appreciate the importance of sitting in those rooms making liberty decisions except those who sit on either side of the table. I applaud your work. Staff shortages result in applicants seeing see the same commissioners again and again, and they never get a date.” —Barbara Treen, former commissioner, NYS Board of Parole

Over the past two years, RAPP and other advocates and community members have succeeded in winning some changes in the practices of the New York State Parole Board, so that some decisions are now based in rehabilitation and transformation—who a person is today, as opposed to who they were decades ago when their crime was committed. This has begun to bring the Board into line with the law and best practices advocated by criminal justice experts.

But these advances continue to be undercut by other trends in the Board, including understaffing and the presence of several commissioners who continue to resist practices based in rehabilitation. These commissioners enable powerful, reactionary law enforcement forces to interfere in release decisions, illegally turning parole-eligible sentences into de facto life without parole.

Our new report exposes the horrific practices of the New York State Parole Board and their impact on incarcerated people across New York State.

You can read more coverage of the report in the Daily News

February 20, 2018

The Missing Piece to End Mass Incarceration in New York

On February 12, the New York State Assembly announced a Criminal Justice Reform Package with some meaningful changes to New York’s criminal legal system on bail, discovery, speedy trial, and solitary confinement—important steps toward undoing the far-reaching damage of mass incarceration.

But a major element was missing: No bills on parole and elder release were included in the package. Mass incarceration in New York will never end unless the legislature and the governor initiate changes that get at the heart of the problem—the persistence of a racist culture of revenge and permanent punishment that keeps people in prison without meaningful access to release. Increasing parole releases, especially of older people who have served long terms for violent crimes, would be a step in this direction.

That may sound unlikely given that the prison population soared because politicians found it easy and popular to act “tough on crime.” The starting point? Increase punishment by pointing to people convicted of the most serious offenses—especially the crimes that make headlines. But now, we need policy makers to understand that what got us here won’t get us out.

To end mass incarceration, the legislature, the parole board, and the governor will need to end the cycle of permanent punishment. Releasing people who have spent decades in prison for a violent crime committed years ago, who have engaged in meaningful transformation and now pose minimal risk to public safety, would be a safe, cost-effective way to begin this process.

Here are some ways RAPP is urging them to do exactly that:

“Geriatric Parole:” Governor Cuomo has proposed legislation to expand New York’s medical parole program for incarcerated older people, instituting a medical parole plan for people age 55 and older with debilitating health conditions.

But the plan excludes some people based solely on the crime of conviction, such as anyone convicted of first-degree murder, no matter how ill or debilitated—and no matter how low the risk they pose to public safety. Engaging in a serious crime at a young age does not make an incapacitated elder a current threat to public safety. In fact, evidence shows that long-incarcerated elders convicted of murder actually pose the very lowest risk to public safety: in contrast to recidivism rates that generally hover in the 40% range, people in this group return to prison at rates around 1% and lower.

The governor’s exclusions should also make us question whether we want our society to deny compassion to whole sectors of people, guaranteeing that they will die in prison.

RAPP urges the governor and the legislature to strengthen the “geriatric parole” proposal by removing all restrictions based on crime of conviction, along with other language that allows the Parole Board to deny applicants solely because of the nature of the crime. The bill should also be strengthened to ensure that the medical criterion for eligibility is an individual’s ability to provide “self-care,” not “self-ambulation.” Finally, mechanisms that trigger and speed up the otherwise slow-moving certification process and ensure public transparency should be strengthened as well.

“If the Risk is Low, Let them Go”

The governor’s plan will shift rather than cut spending, especially as states, confronted with the Trump administration’s economic plans, will be forced to shoulder a larger proportion of spending on Medicaid and other public health costs.

What would truly save money—and promote public safety—would be real elder parole: a plan that presumptively releases people who have served more than their minimum terms and whose present—not past—behavior show that they pose little if any risk to public safety. Older people should be released before they are ill and dying, when they can still contribute to their families and communities. We urge the Assembly to pass A.7546, which ensures that an individual’s current risk to public safety determines parole release. Additionally, older people not otherwise eligible for parole should be given a “second look” and considered for parole at age 55 after serving at least 15 consecutive years in prison.

With older people now making up 21 percent of people in New York State prisons—10,337 total people, a number more than twice what it was in 2000— a bolder and more evidence-based proposal for elder parole should be the governor’s choice. Such a proposal will require Governor Cuomo to exercise political will and would make New York a true national leader in the struggle to end mass incarceration.

To get involved, check our events page or email nyrappcampaign@gmail.com

February 16, 2017

Social Workers Should Be Appointed to the Parole Board

By Shazzia Hines, LMSW and RAPP Organizer

• In December 2016, a front-page article in The New York Times said, “The New York State Board of Parole often operates like an assembly line, with inmates given mere minutes to make a case for their freedom. It is an impersonal process: Commissioners see dozens of cases a day, and most hearings are conducted via video conference. Decisions are frequently boilerplate and can sometimes seem arbitrary.”

To help remedy this problem, the parole board may want to consider hiring New York State Licensed Master’s Social Workers as parole commissioners. I believe that social workers are the most qualified professionals to take up a role that requires parole board members to conduct fair and comprehensive assessments to determine whether an incarcerated person is prepared to be released with conditions including community supervision. If I were an incarcerated person going for a parole hearing, I would only pray that the people reviewing my case were ethically responsible to value the dignity and worth of human beings as a basic professional guideline and code of conduct. Social workers are such people.

That New York Times article (“For Blacks Facing Parole, Signs of A Broken System”) makes it clear that the current parole board members are overpaid, under-qualified, and culturally incompetent. According to The Times, “Board members are mainly from upstate, earn more than $100,000 annually and hold their positions for years. They tend to have backgrounds in law enforcement rather than rehabilitation. Most are white; there is currently only one black man, and there are no Latino men.”

Contrast this with the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers, which states, under the section on the dignity and worth of human beings: “Social workers treat each person in a caring and respectful fashion, mindful of individual differences and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers promote clients’ socially responsible self-determination. Social workers seek to enhance clients’ capacity and opportunity to change and to address their own needs. Social workers are cognizant of their dual responsibility to clients and to the broader society. They seek to resolve conflicts between clients’ interests and the broader society’s interests in a socially responsible manner consistent with the values, ethical principles, and ethical standards of the profession.”

By the time they attend a parole hearing, most of our incarcerated elderly have long since rehabilitated themselves by taking college courses and creating programs demonstrating positive leadership. The fact that these elderly incarcerated women and men are consistently denied release on parole shows that the parole board lacks humility and competence. It exemplifies the board’s professional inability to adequately and comprehensively assess a person’s readiness for parole.

The parole board should function in a way that reflects those principles of social work—to look at a person as an individual, honoring their capacity to change and determining whether to release them based on who they are now and what they can offer to society. Parole boards should also act in the interest of society as a whole, meaning they should promote fairness and healing over revenge and hatred.

I conclude with a call to action for Governor Andrew Cuomo to appoint licensed masters level professional social workers, as five of the current parole commissioners’ terms are due to expire this year.

September 29, 2015

Gov. Cuomo: Get It Together & Do the Right Thing

Saturday night, September 26, 2015 was not the first time Release Aging People in Prison/RAPP – along with about 100 or so other New Yorkers committed to ending mass incarceration and prison injustice – held up lighted candles outside Governor Cuomo’s home in Mt. Kisco. “Candles for Clemency” started last year, when we first stood outside the governor’s home, urging him to grow a heart and a spine and begin taking steps to reduce New York’s huge prison population.

The target issue of the Candles for Clemency vigils has been the governor’s executive power to release people from prison when other channels are not available. RAPP has been crucial to expanding these efforts, because we emphasize that, beyond clemency, the governor could also instruct his parole commissioners to release applicants when they clearly pose no danger to public safety.

Last year, Governor Cuomo did not appear at or respond to Candles for Clemency. This year the governor sent his counsel, Alphonso David, to address the crowd. And on the governor’s behalf, David insulted us all. He threw the burden for the governor’s lack of compassion (zero commutations in his five years in office) back on incarcerated people and their families. The obstacle, David said, has been the lack of “viable candidates” for commutation, a dearth of robust applications submitted to the governor. Individual candle-holders began to challenge David’s statements, calling them fabrications. After all, many people at the vigil had friends or family members who have in fact submitted files and papers requesting commutation—and who have waited in vain for a response.

But we don’t need to cite those files to expose the fabrications mouthed by David for his boss. All we need to do is look at the records of parole board releases—and denials.

There are more than 9,500 elders (people 50 and older) in the prisons of New York, and 2/3 of them have parole-eligible sentences. Put those numbers together with the regulations governing parole—the use of evidence-based methods for determining whether a person of, say, 62 years of age poses any risk of committing a crime of the nature he or she may have committed many decades earlier—plus the statistics showing that older people who have served long sentences pose the very lowest risk of recidivism, and you get a recipe for simultaneously promoting public safety and human rights. Yet Governor Cuomo and his administrators continue to deny some 75% of parole applicants over and over. That is a main reason why the population of people aged 50 and older in New York State prisons has risen by 81% since about 2000.

With a series of quick strokes of his pen (to sign clemency petitions) or just one phone call (instructing his parole board to do the right thing), the governor could put New York in the lead in ending the internationally embarrassing racist policies and practices that have filled prisons with people of color, damaging their families and destabilizing their communities. He could take the courageous—but totally sensible—step of releasing many elders, instead of turning prisons into nursing facilities. He could immediately save the millions of dollars being wasted on security and incarceration and funnel those funds into community health and welfare.

In other words, Governor Cuomo could be a leader. But first he desperately needs some heart. Instead of asking the community to nominate individual cases for clemency consideration, he, like the lion from the Wizard of Oz, should have asked us to help him find some courage. When he does that, we will know he truly cares about communities and justice.

Follow RAPP on Twitter @RAPPCampaign

NYS Parole Board report shows justice still unfulfilled

The Missing Piece to End Mass Incarceration in New York

Gov. Cuomo: Get It Together & Do the Right Thing

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