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Key Fixes for New York’s Broken Parole System Await the Governor’s Signature


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The governor's signature (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)


It wasn’t the eight months of military-style, intense shock incarceration that finally broke me; it was my parole officer.

After my incarceration at Lakeview Shock Incarceration Correctional Facility for non-violent offenders in Brocton, New York, I quickly realized I was living in constant fear of reincarceration. My parole officer had issued strict conditions such as travel limitations and unreasonable curfews, which prevented me from getting to work on time. There were incessant home visits, often at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. I was convinced my parole officer was scrutinizing my every move, just waiting for a reason to issue a technical parole violation.

As it was for me, the fear of reincarceration is an everyday lived reality for over 35,000 people under active parole supervision in New York; a fear that is crippling for those trying to reenter the workforce, rebuild their lives, and heal their families. New York’s parole system is broken. It destroys lives and communities. It costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. It needs to be reformed.

According to Columbia University Justice Lab, 40% of people sent to New York prisons in 2019 were not remanded for new crimes, rather they were reincarcerated for technical violations such as failure to report to a parole officer, living at an unapproved address, or missing a curfew. New York reincarcerates more people for technical parole violations than almost any other state in the country. 

The racial disparity in incarceration for technical parole violations is also undeniable. Black and Latino people are much more likely to be incarcerated for parole violations than white people. In New York City, for example, Black people are incarcerated for technical parole violations at 12 times the rate of whites.

Financially, New York taxpayers are paying for a broken parole system. Parole is administered by the state government; the state is fiscally responsible for supervising people on parole supervision. However, people in violation of parole are incarcerated in local city jails such as Rikers Island in New York City, thus local governments become responsible for footing the bill without reimbursement from the state.

In 2019, state and local governments together spent more than $680 million to incarcerate people for technical parole violations, even though there is no evidence that this led to a meaningful increase in public safety. 

Public safety is not created by putting more of the public back in prison. It begins by creating safe communities. And safe communities are not synonymous with increasing jail and prison populations. Safe, healthy, and prosperous communities arise from supporting and strengthening reentry processes. They result from humanizing people and giving them a fair and fighting chance at rebuilding their lives, and by creating access to opportunities and economic mobility.

Parole was worse than being incarcerated for me. The stress and anxiety that I experienced led to debilitating mental and physical health conditions. The constant policing and pressure by my parole officer and the fear of reincarceration were so overwhelming that I decided to serve out the remainder of my sentence in prison. 

While no longer in prison or on parole, I am still experiencing the long-lasting impacts of a technical parole violation from two years ago. I am therefore keenly aware of the harmful practices of over-policing people on parole, which is why I am advocating for parole reform in New York with the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice, A Little Piece of Light, Unchained, the Robin Hood Foundation, and the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO). 

New York’s broken parole system must be reformed. People already facing enormous barriers to reentry must be supported, not policed and over-paroled. Individuals, families, and communities must not be devastated in the name of public safety.  

Thankfully, the Legislature has taken a step in the right direction. Legislation (S.1144-A - Benjamin / A.5576-A - Souffrant-Forrest) known as the Less Is More Act, will reduce the number of people incarcerated statewide by restricting the use of incarceration for technical parole violations. But the process cannot begin until the bill is made active by the governor’s signature. I urge Governor Cuomo to sign this bill as soon as possible. Let’s make #LessisMoreNY reality and build safer communities.

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Yamirca Vazquez is a resident of the Bronx, New York, and a member of CEO’s Participant Advocate Council (PAC) leadership program. She is pursuing a career in advocacy.

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We Lost Our Siblings to Solitary Confinement; This Torture Must End Now


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Mayor de Blasio at Rikers (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


June is Torture Awareness Month and it is also the month we both lost our siblings — Kalief Browder and Layleen Polanco — because of the torture of solitary confinement. No other family should ever have to go through the pain and torment our baby brother and baby sister suffered and we continue to suffer. Political leaders from New York City to Washington, D.C. have repeatedly invoked Kalief’s and Layleen’s names to promise to end solitary confinement. Now is the time they must live up to their promises.

Kalief was a 16-year-old child when he was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack. He was held on Rikers Island for three years pre-trial before all charges were dismissed. Kalief was locked in solitary confinement for two of those years. As the world came to learn, the torture he experienced in solitary and jail was too much and he died by suicide after his release on June 6, 2015.

Layleen also should never have been incarcerated, let alone in solitary confinement. Against medical professional recommendations, Layleen was locked in solitary because of who she was as a transgender woman. She was in a unit that was supposed to be an alternative to solitary, but she was locked in a cell most of the day in what was simply solitary by another name. She only lasted in this unit nine days before she died on June 7, 2019, and on the day she died she had been locked in her cell for only two to three hours.

As a result of the massive public outcry over their deaths, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio invoked both Kalief’s and Layleen’s names and promised a year ago to “end solitary confinement altogether” in New York City. Despite this promise, the actual rules recently adopted by the city’s jails oversight body, the Board of Correction, are smoke and mirrors and will continue solitary and just call it by another name.

While falsely touted as an end to solitary confinement, under these rules people will be locked alone in a cage 23 or more hours a day. There is no other name for this horrific treatment than solitary confinement, and the negative impacts will be the same, including immense suffering, devastating physical and mental harm, social deterioration, self-mutilation, and death. Not only will this system fail to fulfill the mayor’s promise to fully end solitary, it will be in direct violation of state law, following the recent enactment of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act.

Because the mayor failed to live up to his promise, the New York City Council must act now to finally and fully end solitary confinement in New York City jails. City Council Speaker Corey Johnson has called for fully ending solitary confinement and ensuring that all people in city jails have access to at least 14 hours out-of-cell per day, including at least seven hours of out-of-cell congregate programming and activities with other people. The City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee Chair Keith Powers and numerous City Council members have also urged a complete end to solitary, as have other leading New York City political leaders, including Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Comptroller Scott Stringer. We can wait no longer — it is long past time for the City Council to enact legislation banning solitary confinement once and for all.

But this torturous practice must also be banned in states and localities across the country, as well as in federal custody. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both promised to end solitary confinement during their presidential campaigns, as did other leading Democratic presidential candidates, including Senators Warren and Sanders. A federal Anti-Solitary Taskforce recently released a blueprint for how the President and Congress can fulfill these campaign promises and end solitary confinement in all federal prisons and detention centers while also incentivizing states and localities to do the same. The President and Congress must act now to enact the recommendations of this Blueprint immediately.

We are already marking six years since Kalief died and two years since Layleen died. From New York City to the federal government, for all of those political leaders who have ever invoked Kalief’s or Layleen’s name or called for an end to solitary confinement, you must finally act now to stop this torturous and deadly practice.

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Melania Brown is an activist and the sister of the late Layleen Polanco. Akeem Browder is the founder of the Kalief Browder Foundation and brother of the late Kalief Browder. On Twitter @melaniabrown11 & @AkeemBrowderNYC.

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Mayor de Blasio: Where's the Full School Reopening Plan?


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Mayor de Blasio at school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


I’m writing this on June 25—the last day of the 2020-2021 school year.

And while we know next school year will start on September 13, there's so much we still don't know.

There are some factors—vaccination rate, CDC guidelines—that are holding up some of the details, but the lack of a clear plan and clear communication from Mayor de Blasio and the New York City Department of Education now promises some amount of chaos two months from now. And for those of us who remember the chaotic August of 2020, that brings back nightmares.

We know the city is promising a return to five-day-a-week in-person schooling—yet many parents still ask, "Is that real?" Because we've seen how quickly the city and DOE have changed their minds before. Last year, the start of school was pushed back multiple times. Opt-in periods for remote students changed several times. School closure guidelines were in flux. The promises of remote options for next year for the families not yet confident about in-person schooling were reversed suddenly. And in all of these cases, principals and educators learned the news at the same time as parents and the public—often via Twitter or at the mayor’s press briefing.

Since February, many of us have been sounding the alarm: A pledge is not a plan—and if we got to the end of this school year without a clear plan for the fall, informed by diverse stakeholders and backed by sufficient resources, it would mean trouble, and an inequitable fall reopening. Schools with more resources, parents who can raise funds, and greater digital literacy and linguistic access among their communities will be more confident about their return. And schools that are under-resourced and overcrowded—often serving communities of color—will be left wondering how the new school year is safe, resourced, and better than a return to pre-pandemic "normalcy" that already wasn't serving many students.

Many parents don't know what time their kids' school days will start or end (it was within 24 hours before the end of the school year that we learned the school day would restore the hour that was cut from it this year). Many parents have been raising alarms about whether schools will have after-school programs and many after-school providers have been waiting on clarity about excessive fees that spiked during the pandemic—decisions that could have been made while parents and administrators were all still in the school year together, before summer break disrupted the ability to communicate and collaborate around such issues.

Principals don't know how many students they can have in a classroom, so teachers don't know how many students they'll be teaching—so they leave for their well-deserved vacation with the nagging thought that they’ll be racing to prep new classes in the days before schools reopen. And principals aren't sure if they'll need more classrooms than they have which means any efforts to find more usable space will be hectic and uneven in September.

The city has pledged to hire social workers for every school—will they fulfill that in time? What is the ratio of social workers to students, or is it social workers per school? How about nurses and guidance counselors?

Thanks to the federal and state governments, the city has unprecedented funds—but hasn't been clear how it will use them to reduce class sizes, increase small cohort learning, or fulfill IEPs and other individual teacher-student opportunities.

I get that mask mandates (which should go away, in my opinion but we should defer to public health experts) and status of mandatory vaccinations for teachers and students (which should be in-line with other vaccination requirements as soon as we are beyond "emergency authorization") will be based on guidance the state and city do not yet have.

But right now, we're all left guessing on those pieces and many more. And when we're not given a clear vision from the city, schools and parent communities with resources form their own vision, and others are often left waiting and uncertain. Some families who could afford to leave the city may stay away; others who chose parochial schools will remain out of the public school system; many others may simply choose not to send their kids back until it’s clearer what their schools look like, causing low attendance as schools reopen in September

We've lived this story before: A summer of uncertainty, guesswork, rumors, changing reports. This spring—when parents and guardians regularly received paper updates in kids' backpacks and more folks might be able to attend meetings with teachers and administrators—would have been a good time to hear parents' concerns and address them.

Instead, it will be another summer of uncertainty, where we hope for the best, but prepare for chaos, to the extent that’s possible.

City leaders know there's no real reopening of our city without schools being back in action—safely, equitably, with real resources and with schedules that work for students, teachers, and parents.

The time to pull those stakeholders together was these past few months. Now as teachers and students head into summer, principals will work overtime, teachers won't know what to prep, parents will keep guessing and gossipping...and students will be at risk of going into a third consecutive school year where nothing is routine.

As a child development specialist said to me, the best thing parents can do this summer is find something their kids care about and help them learn it -- whether it's a craft or memorizing baseball statistics. Don't worry about "learning loss" or summer worksheets. Help them remember they can learn and can love to learn.

That's what I want to be focused on this summer—but somehow it seems clear many of us will spend part of our summer breaks working with principals and teachers to try to make sense of class sizes, funding questions, school hours, IEPs, after-school programming, and so much more before the fall.

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Justin Krebs is a parent of three elementary school students in Brooklyn and a parent leader at his own school and in the community school district Presidents Council. These perspectives are his own and do not represent the Parents Association or Presidents Council. On Twitter @justinmkrebs.

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