New York Times

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.

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

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.”

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

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

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.

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

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