Report outlines death rates for older adults incarcerated in New York
/
A new report from Columbia University found that incarcerated people 55 years or older are more likely to die while in prison. Photo via Release Aging People in Prison Campaign
By Rachel Vick
Criminal reform advocates rallied in support of parole reform with renewed urgency Tuesday following the release of a new report that found more people have died in prison in the last decade than during the 364 years the death penalty was legal in New York.
“New York State’s New Death Penalty,” published by Columbia University’s Center For Justice, also chronicles the racial and age disparities in death behind bars.
Co-author Melissa Tanis called the death rates inside prisons a product of the “New York State death penalty of perpetual punishment.”
“The death penalty has been repurposed as death by incarceration sentences, meaning life without parole, life sentences, and virtual life sentences,” Tanis, whose father died while incarcerated after being denied compassionate release, said.
“Repeated parole denials and low parole release rates in recent decades have led to thousands of people spending time well past their minimum sentence despite their eligibility for parole and readiness for release,” she added. “Too many people have died after being denied parole or before even seeing a parole board.”
Since the state began compiling data on deaths in custody in 1976, 7,504 people died while in the custody of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision — seven times the number of deaths under the death penalty.
Black people account for 45 percent of all deaths in custody despite making up only 14 percent of the state's population, according to the report.
Wilfredo Laracuente, program assistant at the Columbia Center for Justice and a formerly incarcerated New Yorker, said that many individuals who have been incarcerated since their early 20s have grown and changed while incarcerated — both because of the steps they have taken to better themselves and because of the natural maturity as people age.
“We need to take a long hard look into the people and the humanistic component of this rather than being so concerned with the data crunching everyone is worried about,” Laracuente said. “Talk to the elderly men that are still waiting and hear their plight and their struggles and hear their accomplishments and stop viewing them as a number. It is necessary to look at us on an individual basis.”
Between 2010 and 2019, more than half of deaths in custody were 55 years or older, according to the report.
Recommendations issued by the report include releasing older people in prison and addressing repeated parole denial through the passage of The Elder and the Fair and Timely Parole bills.
The bills would respectively allow incarcerated people aged 55 and older who have already served 15 or more years a chance to go before the Parole Board, and center release on the individual's current risk and rehabilitation instead of the original crime, while also fully staffing the parole board with diverse commissioners.
State Sen. Jessica Ramos said that the proposed parole reform is not just a criminal justice issue, but a public health issue, citing the report’s findings that lengthy sentences are a detriment to health and shortened life spans for both incarcerated individuals and the family members left outside.
Experiencing the incarceration of a family member decreased life expectancy between 2.6 to 4.6 years, according to a 2021 study.
“[The report] opens eyes even further to the decrepit, criminal, state of our justice system,” Ramos said. “We are the generation that needs to put us on a very serious path to decarceration. More and more we are giving executives the tools to do the right thing and lead with our elders, by example.”
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera — lead sponsor of the Fair and Timely Parole bill in Senate — emphasized the idea that people brought into the criminal justice system shouldn't have the rest of their lives, or the lives of families and communities left behind, defined by the worst thing they’ve done.
Both bills currently await approval in their respective committees.
“Reading Columbia University’s Center for Justice report, ‘NYS’s New Death Penalty,’ confirms what I have seen as Chair of the Committee on Correction: a humanitarian crisis is taking place- not just at Rikers- but throughout the NYS prisons,” said Assemblymember David Weprin, who sponsors Fair and Timely parole in the chamber. “For the sake of the future of New York, now is the time to pass these bills and to have them signed into law by the new governor.”
