When I entered prison, I followed the rehabilitative trail of breadcrumbs set out for me. I was repeatedly told to maintain a clean disciplinary record, obtain an education, sign up for industry jobs, pet the trauma pony, and train a bomb-sniffing dog. Correctional employees encouraged me to embrace these programs so I could honor my victim and redeem my life. I was told, “New Yorkers believe in second chances.”
At first, it all seemed too daunting. I had taken a life, and now I was being offered a free college education? All I could do was cry. My mental health spiraled. I found myself not in a classroom but rather lying face down in a padded room in a state forensic hospital. For me, the only true redemptive act was to kill myself: a life for a life. The prison hospital assigned me a team of mental health professionals, and I began to excavate and examine the decades of abuse and compound trauma that I had survived. I also addressed how my trauma contributed to my heinous crime, which left my victim’s young son without the love and guidance of his father.
Faced with my truths, I had difficulty looking at myself in a mirror; I had become unrecognizable. Yet God continued to give me breath. After six months of intensive cognitive therapy, I was transferred back to my maximum-security prison armed with the philosophy that the only way to atone for a murder was to become a better person. Hurt people hurt people, but healed people heal people. Finally, the rehabilitation rubric established by the Department of Corrections began to make sense, and I embraced it wholeheartedly and in good faith.
During my incarceration, I embraced education. I earned a paralegal degree alongside associate’s and bachelor’s degrees in sociology. My academic success resulted in a scholarship for a master’s degree in criminal justice, which I recently completed. Behind the prison wall, my educational journey took twenty years and vigorous perseverance. Simultaneously, I worked for five years as a customer service phone representative for the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles making thirty-five cents an hour. During the COVID-19 pandemic, at great risk to my health and safety, I worked seven days a week in a hand sanitizer factory, so that hand sanitizer could be distributed for free throughout New York State. For this service, I was paid still only thirty-five cents an hour and contracted COVID three times.
I found my true purpose helping fellow prisoners in the prison law library program. For over twenty years, I have been assisting fellow prisoners with legal research, filing criminal and civil appeals, and representing prisoners at disciplinary hearings. I have helped women reduce their sentences, get visitation with their children, and even secure immediate release.
After twenty years, I have four degrees and only two minor disciplinary infractions. I have worked every day of my incarceration in either an industry, educational, or legal assistance program. I have successfully completed and taught anger replacement programs, and I continue to be in trauma counseling every week. Because these are the positive indicators of rehabilitation established by New York law, I believed I would be granted parole. I was wrong.
Denied. Denied. Denied.
I have been denied parole three times. You might expect there to be an official opposition to my release, but there is not. When the board denied my release, the only explanation it gave was this: You will not be rewarded for good behavior while confined. This was bewildering: eligibility for parole is supposedly predicated on prison achievement and a low disciplinary record. My second parole denial was actually reversed on appeal, and I was given a “new” (de novo) hearing. However, nothing new happened at this new hearing. The parole interview continued to focus almost exclusively on the facts around my original crime, rather than evidence about my rehabilitation and whether I posed any safety risk to society.
My individual experience is reflective of a broader systemic issue, not just in New York but across the country. “Parole boards rarely release people, even when a person has support from prison staff, the community, and the judge who sentenced them,” the ACLU states.
New York was assigned a D− grade for fairness and effectiveness of its parole process by the Prison Policy Initiative in 2019. There’s much to be improved in this liberal, Democrat-dominated state that spends over $3 billion each year on its prison system. In 2023 the Vera Institute of Justice released a report titled “New York Must Rethink Its Parole Release System.” It found that the state’s release rate had been in decline, falling from a 42 percent release rate in 2018 to 33 percent in 2022, with parole commissioners denying parole far more frequently than they granted it.
The Vera Institute also found that, in 90 percent of cases heard in 2019, parole was denied based on the original crime. One’s original crime is never going to change; it is an immutable fact. However, rehabilitation does occur. I have seen and experienced it firsthand. Many of us with life sentences have recalibrated our souls in ways others could never begin to understand. Conscience is a heavy burden, and a commitment to positive change is the only way to carry the weight.
When prisoners have access to rehabilitative programs, they often take it. Meaningful participation in, and completion of, state-designed programs should be the very definition of rehabilitative remorse and a solid identifier of a good candidate for parole release. If we are not releasing prisoners who have embraced rehabilitative values, then we are intentionally undercutting the legislative intent of second chances through parole release.
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Over the past couple of decades, many state legislatures changed their parole practices to require board members to consider factors beyond the seriousness of the underlying crime. Sadly, even after these administrative law changes were implemented, state court judges found themselves having to remind parole commissions that their role is to give “fair consideration to each applicable statutory factor” and “not to resentence” petitioners.
New York has a chance to lead real change. The Fair and Timely Parole Act is legislation being considered in this legislative session that would require parole boards to concentrate on the person’s rehabilitation while incarcerated, rather than focus exclusively on the crime for which the sentence was imposed. This past January, the New York City Bar Association’s Mass Incarceration Task Force, Corrections and Community Reentry Committee, and Criminal Courts Committee expressed joint support in a report:
Many of our members are lawyers practicing in the criminal justice system, and we have seen firsthand how people are more than the worst crime they have ever committed, and how they may change and grow over time and have a positive impact, not just within prison walls but also in the larger community. However, this change and growth is rarely recognized by the parole board.
There are other fixes I would suggest from my perspective as a jailhouse lawyer. For one, legal redress should be possible after a denial. When prisoners in New York are denied parole, they typically cannot automatically seek legal redress in the courtroom, even though a legitimate liberty interest is at stake. Rather, they enter a legal labyrinth in which the prisoner must first file an interagency appeal with the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, wait for the decision, and then move for legal redress in a courtroom. New York judges should have the authority to release prisoners when they determine the parole board has overstepped its legislative mandate.
Another way is to follow the COMPAS score (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions) which is used to predict and grant conditional release. It is often used for low-level offenders on shorter prison terms, who do not go before a board. If it was used for people with longer sentences, it could mean that the sentence passed down by a sentencing judge is the actual sentence and release date—as opposed to an unknown future date after numerous board appearances before a parole board.
New York could also easily allow lawyers to be present during the parole interview. It seems odd that lawyers are permitted at every stage of the criminal process—except during the parole interview. Why not permit lawyers in the parole interview when there is a legitimate liberty interest in the balance?
From my perspective, the bravest step would be to abolish parole interviews altogether. The parole interview involves unimaginable fear, with extremely high stakes and so much hanging in the balance. Abolishing the interview should be a critical component of how New York answers the need for more just sentencing schemes and decarceration. As a society, we are capable of developing more humane solutions rather than defaulting to a broken status quo.
On my prison law clerk desk, I have a quote: “Indifference is the height of injustice.” I live by this. I refuse to be indifferent, or silent, about what is happening to New York state prisoners serving life sentences, caught in the endless confusion, frustration, and demoralization of earning parole.
I believe in accountability for taking a life. I take full responsibility for my criminal conduct. Moreover, I know that when a prisoner sincerely applies themselves to programs, it takes true grit and a real desire to change. I anchored myself to rehabilitative programs to honor my victim. The recalibration of a broken soul is hard, hard work, which should never be reduced to the meek phrase “a good or efficient use of time while confined.”
This is a call to action for fair justice, for the diplomacy of mercy, and for the legislative mandates that uphold the transformative power of rehabilitative remorse and the promise of second chances.
This essay was edited and published in collaboration with Empowerment Avenue.
Image: Stormseeker / Unsplash