Report: NY's Parole System Rife With "Structural Racism"

Black city residents are jailed on Rikers Island for alleged state parole violations 12 times more than whites, while Latinx people are accused of parole violations nearly four times more.

These figures are found in a disturbing new report on New York State’s parole system released on Thursday by Columbia University’s Justice Lab.

“New York's entire parole system is drawing in black and brown people at a wildly disparate rate. All while failing to help people of color make it when they come out of prison," says Vincent Schiraldi, co-author of the report and former New York City Probation Commissioner.

"Structural racism has profound impacts on parole outcomes in New York," reads the report, "Racial Inequities in New York's Parole System." Not only are black and Latinx New Yorkers more likely to be charged with violating parole conditions, they are more likely to be jailed for alleged violations of those conditions, the researchers wrote.

Among those held on Rikers by New York State's parole system was 18-year-old Nicholas Feliciano, who hung himself last November while Correction Officers allegedly watched on closed-circuit TV. He'd been held for over a month for a technical violation of parole supervision rules without seeing a judge or being given a chance to apply for bail, Gothamist reported. Feliciano wasn't even appointed a lawyer.

The new report confirms a mounting crisis within New York's parole system.

"We locked so many people up two weeks ago that we ran out of handcuffs and shackles," one New York State Parole Officer who works in New York City and spoke on condition of anonymity told Gothamist.

When asked what they thought of the report's conclusion that the parole system was racist, the officer sarcastically replied, "shocking."

The number of inmates held on Rikers Island for technical parole violations rose to a twelve-month high in December 2019, when 818 inmates were held. That's an 11 percent increase from December 2018, according to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services, or DCJS. The previous 12-month high was the 811 technical violators held on Rikers in February 2019.

Technical violators are not held for new crimes, according to DCJS. They are parolees detained for alleged violations of supervision rules, like smoking marijuana, breaking a curfew or missing a mandatory appointment.

New York State reincarcerates more parolees for technical violations of parole conditions like these than any other state except Illinois, based on an examination of data from the 42 states that keep it, Gothamist reported last year. As the number of technical parole violators held on Rikers is rising, the overall number of Rikers inmates fell below 6,000 for the first time in decades, the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice said in January.

"New York’s current 'hair-trigger' approach to people accused of technical parole violations," a November 2019 Bar Association report found, "reveals that serious deficiencies persist."

Meanwhile, state court judges reversed a record number of 50 parole revocations in 2019, court records obtained by Gothamist show.

In one of the 50 decisions, a judge reminded parole officials that "notions of due process and fairness apply with equal force in the taking of a plea in the context of a parole violation." Another judge condemned what "appears to be intentional and manipulative use of the charging and warrant process."

Two courts called out the Chief Administrative Law Judge at the Rikers Island parole court, Rhonda Tomlinson, for wrongly overruling decisions made by front-line administrative law judges to restore technical violators to parole supervision.

Chief Judge Tomlinson has been pressuring the administrative law judges she oversees on Rikers to send parolees back to prison.

“For far too long, our criminal justice system has been jailing people solely for minor parole violations. More than 10 percent of our jail population is made up of New Yorkers who missed an appointment, failed a drug test or committed technical, non-criminal parole violations," New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said in response to the new report.

"As we work to reform the criminal justice system, we need to ensure we reform the parole system," Speaker Johnson added.

A bill to reform New York's parole system called The Less is More Act remains locked up in a state Senate committee, despite 16 co-sponsors, a renewed push this legislative session by advocates to pass the bill and support from the District Attorneys for the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Unlike Rikers Island, which is Mayor Bill de Blasio's responsibility, the state parole system falls under the authority of Governor Andrew Cuomo and a state agency called the Department of Corrections and Community Supervisions, or DOCCS.

Spokespersons for Governor Cuomo and DOCCS both did not respond to requests for comment.

“Non-criminal, technical parole violations have become a major—but too often unseen and unknown—driver of mass incarceration here in New York State, and they overwhelmingly impact people of color," said Jonathan Lippman, former Chief Judge of New York State and Chair of the Independent Commission on NYC Criminal Justice & Incarceration Reform.

Lippman added, "We must do away with needless incarceration for non-criminal violations of parole and work together to address the issue of unequal treatment."