Issue Summary.
There are no comprehensive assessment tools for the commissioners to use to help determine whether the incarcerated person will be a risk to the community. Parole Board members must make decisions based on the meager evidence available. Thus, there will always be a high degree of subjectivity in the process to balance conflicting concerns.
There is a strong current perception that rehabilitation is not fully taken into account in parole board evaluations.
NYS Division of Parole statistics show that the release rate had decreased markedly over the past decade. e.g. The first appearance approval rate dropped from 66% in 1992 to 53% in 2001. The drop has been even more severe for long-termers convicted of a long-ago violent crime. The result is longer, expensive incarceration, - longer than necessary, given the rehabilitation record and the ability of many incarcerated persons to live within the law.
Coalition Position.
Establish clear statutory standards, creating, in most cases, a presumption
of parole at the judicially imposed minimum, unless specified post
sentencing factors exist.
Ensure that parole decisions fully comply with Executive Law Section 259-i,
including consideration of the institutional record, program goals and
accomplishments, academic achievements, vocational education, training or
work assignments, therapy, and interpersonal relationships with staff and
other incarcerated persons. Require written explanations, in some detail, of
the reasons for Parole Board decisions.
Develop and use a comprehensive risk assessment tool to help determine the
risk factor of the incarcerated person. Include corresponding guidelines to
help balance the risk with individual factors demonstrating rehabilitation
and outside support including family, housing and employment.
Reduce the
use of prison for technical violations of parole. Use mostly graduated
sanctions instead of prison..
Establish, in each County, a Community Parole Advisory Council to develop
and encourage use of specific community-based programs that allow the
community to be directly involved in preparing and re-acclimating the
parolee to the community.
Arrange reentry assistance before release: e.g., community referrals,
guidance with mentoring, support-circles, and professional counseling, job preparation and
placement, drug and/or mental health treatment, and special health
assistance, as needed by each individual.
Restore the Division of Parole’s latitude in the merit termination of parole
after full risk assessment and years of successful reintegration by
parolees.
Provide a gradual lifting of sanctions
for people who are on parole, - that is, down grading in supervision from
intense to minimum following the meeting of milestones that indicate
"success" on parole or "successful transition."
In
general, reduce the length of parole.
Ensure that the Parole Board has an appropriate diversity of experience and
background (e.g. social service experience, race, home location), and is
thus representative of the communities from which the majority of
incarcerated persons come, and to which they will return.
Strengthen the appeal process, giving further weight and consequence to the verdict of a judge of an appeal under Article 78.
Rationale.
A. Fairness and full justice in parole hearings are as important as in the rest of the criminal justice system. Consider the truth of nine expert criminologists recently published in "Unlocking America," JFA Institute, Nov. 2007 www.jfa-associates.com :
1. Length of incarceration? Three facts: a) many prisoners are now serving longer prison terms; b) the longer prison terms are not proportionate to the severity of the crime they were convicted of; and c) the extension of their length of incarceration has no major impact on their recidivism rate, or crime rates in general.
For the same crimes, U.S. prisoners receive sentences twice as long as English prisoners, three times as long as Canadian prisoners, four times as long as Dutch prisoners, five times as long as Swedish prisoners and five to ten times as long as French prisoners. Yet these countries’ rates of violent crime re lower than ours, and their rates of property crime are comparable.
The rate of re-arrest (for any reason) for state prisoners released in 1994 was essentially constant (62%-66%) regardless of time served (6 months to 60 months) and was somewhat less (54%) for those serving 61 months or more.
2. Career criminals? Of the total arrests in 1994-97, only 5% were the total arrests of prisoners released in 1994-97, and only 1% were the total arrests of released prisoners for violent crimes.
Just 1.2 % of those who served time for homicide and were released in 1994 were re-arrested for a new homicide within three years of release; and just 2.5% of released rapists were arrested for another rape. Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex-offenders to be re-arrested for any offense. Their rates of re-arrest for a new sex offense were only 5.3%.
3. Parole policy? There is little evidence that lengthy parole terms decrease crime or recidivism; there is no evidence that incarcerating people for non-compliance with the terms of parole prevents more serious crime.
B. Justice Kennedy, in his recent speech before the
American Bar Association, directed attention to the "remarkable scale" of
incarceration in the United States, compared to other industrialized countries,
the high proportion of African-American males incarcerated, and the high
expenditures for prisons. He noted "Our resources are misspent, our punishments
too severe, our sentence too long."
C. Savings.
For every 1% drop in the parole-release rate, about 300 extra
incarcerated persons will be maintained in the system at a cost of about $ 9
million dollars per year retained. Most who are denied parole are hit with
another two years, and this often can happen repeatedly. Hence, a release rate
drop of 10% means that the costs of that extra retention would build up to over
$180 million per year. These are obtainable savings from a fairer parole board
process.
D. Children & families. Unnecessarily extended prison terms
means that tens of thousands of NYS children further miss the daily love, instruction, and guidance
of a parent who is in a NYS prison, and their development as full citizens is
further jeopardized.
Children of incarcerated
persons are at risk, and have a higher probability of emotional distress,
failure in school, and conflict with the law.
Counteracting this exposure, earlier restoration of family unity can
reduce the probabilities of later youth-breakdowns, drug use, crime and incarceration costs.
E.
The Commission on Sentencing Reform report dated October 15, 2007 states:
"The Commission believes that great strides can
be made in the
area of public safety by utilizing evidence-based practices when assessing and
making decisions affecting offenders in order
to reduce recidivism. Stated simply, an "evidence-based" practice is one that is
measurable and repeatedly has been shown, through high-quality research, to
reduce offender recidivism. At the heart of evidence-based practices is
the adoption of a validated "risk and needs" assessment
instrument which can assist sentencing judges
-- as well as prison, probation and parole authorities -- to more
accurately estimate the actual risk posed by an offender, identify personal
deficits that have contributed to the
offender's past criminality and target those deficits most likely to lead
to further criminal behavior.”
"Parole should use the instrument to help
determine, to the extent indeterminate sentencing is continued, which offenders
are appropriate for release into the community and which continue to pose a
significant threat to public safety. Parole and probation officials also should
use it to help determine the type and intensity of offender programming, as well
as the level of supervision that should be provided for any given offender while
on parole or probation. Because "dynamic" factors routinely change, the
instrument can be used to decrease or increase the level of supervision based
upon offender progress or regress. Based on the foregoing, the Commission
strongly recommends that the State adopt and utilize a validated risk and needs
instrument throughout the criminal justice system."
F. James Austin, president of the JFA Institute advises: "Proper
employment of limited correctional resources cannot happen
until we exploit
the readily available technology of risk assessment."
See Also: Reentry Services and LifeLine planks.
A summary of all 12 planks can be found at Summary
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