by Reuven Blau and Rachel Holliday Smith March 6, 2022, 8:03 p.m. Updated March 7, 2022, 9:23 a.m.New York’s major parole policy reform went into effect March 1. It aims to transform how formerly incarcerated people are treated. Here’s how it works.
by Reuven Blau and Rachel Holliday Smith March 6, 2022, 8:03 p.m. Updated March 7, 2022, 9:23 a.m.
Our nonprofit newsroom relies on readers like you. Help keep our journalism free for all New Yorkers by making a donation today.
Join the community that powers your independent local news.
Our nonprofit newsroom relies on readers like you.
Help keep our journalism free for all New Yorkers by making a donation today.
Join the community that powers
your independent local news.
For decades, New York state law allowed parole officers to toss people back into jail for low-level infractions like missing a curfew or having marijuana in their system.
When it comes to jailing parolees across the nation, New York has been an outlier. The state returns more people to jail for technical parole violations and drug treatment than any other in the U.S.
And Black and Hispanic people were much more likely to be re-incarcerated for those so-called “technical violations” than their white counterparts who committed the same infractions.
In 2018, a coalition of incarceration-reform activists pushed elected officials to introduce the Less is More bill, to take some power away from parole officers and give more legal rights to parolees.
Supporters of the legislation eventually included several county district attorneys and sheriffs, as well as former parole and correctional officials. They argued the old system was overly punitive and the violation hearing process a bureaucratic mess that often trapped people in jail for months.
But the sweeping reform legislation was opposed by the union representing parole officers, the New York State Parole Benevolent Association, which had close ties to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The union contended its members should be able to use their discretion in determining who is sent back to jail.
As the bill stalled in Albany for three years, the number of technical parole technical violators put back into Rikers and other city jails went up, despite a decrease in the overall jail population.
Three months after Cuomo resigned in disgrace, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Less is More Act on Sept. 17. It was hailed as her first criminal justice reform push.
There are five big categories of changes happening to parole policy:
Advocates for criminal justice reform have been pushing for these changes since at least 2016, driven by anger over a system they say too harshly punishes Black and brown New Yorkers. In the city, the measure was supported by four of the city’s district attorneys, with Staten Island DA Michael McMahon the only holdout. The legislation was also backed by the city’s Bar Association and DAs from Nassau, Westchester, and Albany.
A major turning point in the legislative process came when Hochul named then-State Senator Brian Benjamin as her lieutenant governor. He was a lead sponsor of the bill.
“When she took him on she had to take on his priorities,” Gabriel Sayegh, the co-executive director at the Katal Center for Equity, Health and Justice. “That was definitely a really fortunate turn of events”
In 2019, parole officers here sent approximately 6,000 people back to jail on technical violations, according to state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision records.
By 2020, about 10% of the entire state prison population was people incarcerated on technical parole violations.
Get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to your inbox each morning. Cancel anytime.
