Advocates pressure Cuomo to sign parole reform bill
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Parole reform advocates rallied outside Gov. Cuomo’s office Thursday, calling on him to sign the Less is More Act. Photos courtesy of #LessIsMoreNY
By Rachel Vick
More than a dozen activists and criminal justice advocates rallied outside Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Manhattan office Thursday to demand he sign a parole reform bill recently passed in the state legislature.
The Less is More Act, sponsored by State Sen. Brian Benjamin and Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, looks to reduce incarceration due to technical violations such as missing curfew.
“This bill will keep thousands of New Yorkers - predominantly Black and Brown - home with their families where they belong, rather than sending them back to jail for petty non-criminal parole rule violations,” said organizer Derek Singletary, the co-founder of Unchained. “As New York attempts to rebuild after the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, we cannot afford to spend $680 million a year locking people up with no benefit to public safety.”
The bill establishes a credit system where their post-release supervision sentence is reduced as they meet the conditions of their release.
Formerly incarcerated campaign members like Avion Gordon lamented the fact that after dreaming of the feeling of freedom, formerly incarcerated people are forced to live under restrictions that not only impede their personal freedom but their reentry into society.
“Our current parole system is punitive; it adds unnecessary hurdles and burdens upon individuals that have been released from prison,” Gordon said. “If the parole system actually assisted formerly incarcerated people with their reentry process, then upon my release I should have been able to find employment and keep that employment.”
“Progress is a river and we are swimming upstream,” he added. “The moment we stop swimming, stop fighting we will get swept away.”
The bill failed to pass in the 2019 and 2020 sessions, but with the support of both houses, four of the city’s district attorneys — including Melinda Katz — and a city seemingly laser-focused on recovery, advocates are hopeful that their pressure on the governor will inspire a signature.
Advocates say that the millions of dollars in taxpayer money that New York state spends in incarcerating parolees on technical violations would be better spent on rehabilitation and social programs.
CEO of Reign 4 Life Marcellus Morris said that the solution to the ongoing crime is not cracking down on parolees but providing programs and community connections. Morris said that elderly people and credible messengers like people coming home from prisons are “the answer to the violence… because we’re the ones they'll listen to.”
“If they don't listen to us they ain’t gonna listen to nobody else; they’re not going to listen to the police — I barely want to talk to the police,” Morris said. “Some of these elders that we've got locked up forever have changed on the inside, and all they want is the chance to change on the outside.”
In New York City, Black and Latinx residents are 12 and four times more likely to be incarcerated due to technical violations than their white counterparts, according to the campaign.
Policy Counsel of the New York Civil Liberties Union Jared Trujillo said parole is leftover from Jim Crow vagrancy laws and agreed that $680 million poured into parole violations should instead be reinvested.
“If you’re willing to cage someone for that and spend millions to do so, that is a continuation of vagrancy,” Trujillo said. “That is a continuation of the original sins of this country; that is racism. We don't invest in recovery, we don't invest in humans… we can do better, every day that we don’t do better is an injustice.
