Formerly incarcerated New Yorkers push state to pass parole overhaul
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A parole reform advocate speaks at a rally for the Less Is More Act, a parole reform bill that has received support from various local district attorneys. Photo by Daijohn McLaurin.
By David Brand
When Dyjuan Tatro left prison after more than a decade, he went to work, consulting a candidate for state attorney general and advocating for criminal justice reforms as a government affairs officer. Tatro, 33, earned a degree from Bard College and gained international notoriety as a member of a prison debate team that defeated a team from Harvard at a competition.
Despite his lofty accomplishments and the many years that have passed since the assault conviction that landed him behind bars, Tatro remains at risk for reincarceration every day. He is one of thousands of New Yorkers on parole who can be sent back to jail based on technical violations — small and sometimes unavoidable mistakes, like returning home from work after curfew.
“Parole in this state is punitive. The number one function is to send you back to prison,” Tatro said. Supervision restrictions have complicated his career and forced him to routinely sit in a parole office for hours, waiting for a brief meeting with an officer, he said. “Parole has not done anything to help me.”
A bill before state lawmakers would address those issues and reorient supervised release around constructive growth and re-entry into the community, instead of approximate jail and saddling parolees with the constant threat of reincarceration. The bill, known as the Less Is More Act, would specifically establish an “earned time credit” that reduces a person’s post-release supervision sentence as they meet the conditions of their release. It would also limit the types of technical violations that drive an increase in the jail and prison population, even as the number of people incarcerated for misdemeanors and felonies has decreased significantly.
A 2018 report by the Mayor’s Office on Criminal Justice found that 16 percent of detainees in New York City were jailed for technical violations. From 2014 to 2018, the total jail population in New York City decreased by roughly 27 percent, but the number of people jailed for technical violations rose, according to a report by the city’s Independent Budget Office.
“We’re literally now building floors on jails for technical violators — people who missed appointments or tested dirty,” said Vincent Schiraldi, co-director of Columbia University's Justice Lab and a former commissioner of New York City Probation last year. “People are living in homeless shelters, they have drug problems, they can’t get jobs — and instead of helping them we're spending [hundreds of millions of dollars] locking them up.”
The Less Is More Act, which has support from several county prosecutors, failed to make it out of committee in the last legislative session, but justice reform advocates and formerly incarcerated individuals are optimistic it will pass in 2020.
“The most challenging part [of parole] is they set curfew, which, when you’re trying to get a job or have programs to complete is hard,” said KiKi Dunston, a Corona native who served six years in prison.
Dunston has had three different parole officers during her time in post-release supervision, she said. Each transition has further complicated her ability to work and forced her to repeat the same tedious paperwork or program assignments — many of which she had already finished in prison.
“My parole officer that I had initially retired and the transition was difficult; it was getting a new person who did not know me,” Dunston said. “They didn’t understand things that should have been in the computer system or what I had done already. They had to get permission for their supervisor for every single step. It was like going back to the beginning.”
Dunston said post release programs should instead focus on helping people access services, seek jobs or build their career, not create a threat that hangs over their heads and makes success a challenge.
The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision declined to comment on the legislation.
Opponents of the Less Is More Act have downplayed the impact of technical violations on people in post-release supervision, explaining that most reincarcerated parolees are sent to jail because they have “absconded” — cut off ties with their parole officer — or because they were re-arrested for another offense. Only about 9 percent of parolees who are reincarcerated are sent back to jail because of technical violations, the state says.
Wayne Spence, president of the union that represents parole officers statewide, said the Less Is More Act would remove consequences for violating conditions of release.
“If technical violations alone are not enough to send someone to jail then how do you intervene when you see someone spiraling out of control?” said Spence, who leads the Public Employees Federation. “These people who did something wrong need some type of corrective action.”
Spence acknowledged that some parole violations are “based on CYA” — a “cover your ass” mentality — that compels parole officers to “err on the side of caution and say, ‘Let’s protect our community and take them back into custody.’” But he said parole officers are typically willing to provide alternatives to incarceration for parolees who commit technical violations.
He said some reform is needed, but he suggested a more gradual approach. “You need a scalpel to do something like this, but they’re coming at it with a machete.”
But to justice reformers and the formerly incarcerated, the current system is too broken for small adjustments.
“You’re walking on pins and needles. You don’t know when you’re going to be called into the office and told ‘We’re going to violate you because you missed curfew,’” Legal Aid Society attorney Michelle Fields told the Eagle last year
“You don’t have a chance to reacclimate or readjust,” she added. “It’s still punitive instead of, let me have redemption, let me re-enter society, let me have the opportunity to be a productive citizen. You have this whole supervision hanging over your head."
