A second chance: How the parole justice
movement has gained steam in New York state
BY ROBBIE SEQUEIRA
Without a second chance,
Donna Hylton would have
never transformed her life.
Without a second chance,
Hylton may only be remembered
for a traumatic childhood
that included repeatedly
being traffi cked from
native Jamaica and sexually
and physically abused. Subsequently,
Hylton would end up
serving a 27-year prison stint
for the kidnapping, torture,
and murder of 62-year-old
Long Island real-estate broker
Thomas Vigliarolo who
was held prisoner by Hylton
and two accomplices for 15-20
days.
And without that second
chance, Hylton would’ve
never had the chance to earn a
master’s degree, pen a widelyacclaimed
memoir about her
traumatic childhood and
struggles behind bars, or to
be one of the voices in the parole
justice movement — an
effort that promotes fair and
meaningful release opportunities
for incarcerated people
in New York’s state prisons.
“The philosophy of the
parole justice movement is
that everyone deserves a
second chance,” Hylton told
the Times. “For many people,
they didn’t get their fi rst
chance, and that may have
led them to a life of crime or
to one mistake that put them
in prison for a chunk of their
life … If prison is supposed to
be a place of rehabilitation —
why shouldn’t those who’ve
served 20-plus years get a second
chance to be reintegrated
into society.”
The parole justice movement
scored a major policy
win this fall when Democratic
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed
into law the Less Is More Act
providing paroled prisoners
with 30 days of earned time
credit for every 30 days in the
community without a parole
violation — it goes into full effect
next month.
She also introduced a host
of reforms, including an end
to automatic detention and incarceration
for certain technical
violations and an improvement
to due process allowing
parolees a right to counsel at
every stage of the parole revocation
process.
And while nearly 200 New
Yorkers were released from
the heavily-scrutinized Rikers
Island facility — where
rampant accounts of abuse
and poor conditions imperiled
staff and prisoners during
the COVID-19 pandemic
— and rejoined their families
as soon as the bill became law,
the fi ght for parole justice continues.
But advocates say that
more needs to be done to secure
the successful release of
New York state parolees, particularly
elderly inmates and
inmates of color.
“We can’t declare victory
just yet. ‘Less Is More’
doesn’t go fully into effect until
March. For many people, a
four-month wait is a matter of
life or death. It needs to be put
into effect immediately, and
Governor Hochul should take
the necessary steps to do so,”
penned Ashish Prashar, a justice
reform activist in an oped
to the Gotham Gazette.
In 2021 alone, 16 New Yorkers
BRONX TIMES R 16 REPORTER, MAR. 4-10, 2022 BTR
lost their lives in city jails
and may still lack access to
critical medical care.
There are roughly 35,000
people incarcerated in New
York state prisons, and nearly
half the people in New York
prisons, 47.9%, are Black —by
comparison 24.1% of incarcerated
New Yorkers are Latino
and 24.7% are white — and
nearly 1 in 4 inmates in New
York prisoners are 50 and
older.
The percentage of older
New Yorkers in prison continues
to grow despite the state’s
declining prison population.
In 2007, for example, roughly
11% of the prison population
was 50 or older, and in 2017,
the number rose to around
15%.
Additionally, the average
age of death from so-called
natural cause in state prisons
is around 57, an impetus advocates
stress for the importance
of a bill introduced by
state Sen. Brad Hoylman, a
Manhattan Democrat, which
would give New York inmates
aged 55 and older a chance
for parole, regardless of their
crime, as long as they have
served 15 years of their sentence.
About 4,800 inmates are
currently eligible for parole in
New York, and 1 in 5 people in
prison — about 7,500 people —
are eligible for parole within
the next year, according to
state prison data obtained by
the Times. Roughly 40% of all
people in the state’s prisons —
about 21,000 — are serving a
parole-eligible sentence.
Once those serving indeterminate
sentences have
reached their minimum sentence
— for example, 25 years
on a 25-life sentence — they
become eligible for parole.
Advocates from the People’s
Campaign for Parole Justice
state that this shouldn’t be
considered an “early release,”
but instead “an opportunity
for people to serve the remainder
of their sentence at home
under parole supervision.”
While the state’s parole release
numbers were increasing
from a 10%-15% release
rate to 35-40% before the pandemic,
it went the opposite direction
once COVID-19 took
shape. Advocates also cite not
only slower releases since the
pandemic but a system that is
increasingly political and disorganized.
The U.S. Bureau of Justice
Statistics shows that prisons
nationwide released 10%
fewer people in 2020 than in
2019. Data and Prison Policy
Initiative, a criminal justice
public policy think tank,
suggests that the decline in
prison population is not a result
of increasing releases,
but reduced prison populations.
“The signifi cant drop in
admissions to prisons was
largely an unintended consequence
of court delays and
suspension of transfers from
local jails early in the pandemic,
rather than any dedicated
decarceration efforts,”
said Emily Widra, a senior research
analyst at Prison Policy
Initiative.
Additionally, prison reform
progress that ramped
upon during the tail-end of
former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s
administration, have been
scrapped by new Mayor Eric
Adams who favors a return to
solitary confi nement.
“We’re seeing this movement
really be driven by people
on the ground, and they
aren’t backing down from
what we see as a reform of the
New York state criminal justice
system and state and city
prisons,” said Lorenzo Jones,
co-founder and co-director
of the Brooklyn-based Katal
Center for Health, Equity, and
Justice. “But we also see that
progress threatened by Eric
Adams and criminal justice
policies that we know continue
to disproportionately affect
Black populations in the
city.”
But providing second
chances, particularly for
those incarcerated for long
periods of time, also includes
providing safety nets for parolees
to prevent newly-released
prisoners from being
another statistic in the state’s
43% recidivism rate.
“It’s about investment,
it’s about successfully providing
people, human beings
who spent possibly most
of their life behind a prison
cell, a chance to start anew
and make the most of new opportunity,”
said Hylton. “But
I also think a lot of that involves
compassion, empathy
and possibly changing our
mindsets on how we view the
prison population and how we
preserve their humanity.”
Perhaps no one knows the importance of a second chance more than
Donna Hylton, whose chronicled her life journey from childhood trauma
to prison and beyond in her memoir “A Little Piece of Light.”
Photo courtesy Donna Hylton
Nearly 200 New Yorkers were released from Rikers Island after Gov.
Kathy Hochul signed The Less Is More Act into law last fall. The full law
goes into effect in March. Photo courtesy Getty Images