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For Blacks Facing Parole in New York State, Signs of a Broken System

An inmate at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in Ossining, N.Y. The New York Times analyzed thousands of parole decisions from the past few years and found that black prisoners in the state were at a marked disadvantage.Credit...Bryan Thomas for The New York Times

Jaimie Davenport and Billy Cassell had their first hearings before the New York State Board of Parole earlier this year. Both were serving a maximum of six years on a burglary conviction, Mr. Cassell for breaking into storage units, Mr. Davenport for stealing cellphones.

The men are in their 30s and told the board that they had struggled for years with substance abuse — Mr. Cassell with drugs, Mr. Davenport with alcohol.

Each had served a prior sentence for theft, and each had done a stretch in solitary confinement for breaking prison rules.

Mr. Cassell was set free. But not Mr. Davenport. The board turned him down, extending his prison term for at least another two years.

For all their similarities, there was a telling difference: Mr. Cassell is white; Mr. Davenport is black.

And in New York, black men going before the parole board are at a marked disadvantage.

An analysis by The New York Times of thousands of parole decisions from the past several years found that fewer than one in six black or Hispanic men was released at his first hearing, compared with one in four white men.

It is a disparity that is particularly striking not for the most violent criminals, like rapists and murderers, but for small-time offenders who commit property crimes like stealing a television from a house or shoplifting from Duane Reade — precisely the people many states are now working to keep out of prison in the first place.

Since 2006, white inmates serving two to four years for a single count of third-degree burglary have been released after an average of 803 days, while black inmates served an average of 883 days for the same crime.

The racial disparity in parole decisions in the state is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of a broken system. Intended as a progressive tool to promote good behavior, parole has devolved into a hurried, often chaotic procedure. Inmates typically get less than 10 minutes to plead their cases before they are sent back to their cells.

The parole board has not been fully staffed for years and rarely sees a prisoner in person. Inmates are usually glimpsed from the shoulders up on a video screen.

Commissioners — as board members are called — often read through files to prepare for the next interview as the inmate speaks. The whole process is run like an assembly line. They hear cases just two days a week and see as many as 80 inmates in that time.

Board members are mainly from upstate, earn more than $100,000 annually and hold their positions for years. They tend to have backgrounds in law enforcement rather than rehabilitation. Most are white; there is currently only one black man, and there are no Latino men.

In short, they have little in common with the black and Latino inmates who make up nearly three-quarters of the state prison population.

At a September board meeting, one commissioner, Marc Coppola, complained that he had trouble keeping track of which inmate he was interviewing. “We were a mess,” Mr. Coppola said, according to video of the meeting. “We didn’t even know who was in the chair.”

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‘We Were a Mess,’ Parole Commissioner Says

Members of the New York State Board of Parole discussed the challenges of keeping up with caseloads. "We didn't even know who was in the chair," a commissioner said at a September meeting (at 1:08).

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Members of the New York State Board of Parole discussed the challenges of keeping up with caseloads. "We didn't even know who was in the chair," a commissioner said at a September meeting (at 1:08).CreditCredit...New York State Office of Public Safety

Tina Stanford, the board’s chairwoman, agreed. “There are others among us who’ve had similar concerns, just for what their experience in terms of the caseload has been,” she said.

While it is not possible to know whether race is a factor in any particular parole decision, a pattern of racial inequity is clear when the data are examined on a large scale. The Times analyzed 13,876 parole decisions for male inmates over a three-year period ending in May.

The analysis included only first-time appearances before the board, which take place after inmates complete their minimum sentence. The Times took into account such factors as an inmate’s crime, age, race and previous stints in state prison.

The board rarely released violent offenders of any race, denying nearly 90 percent of them at their initial interview. But among offenders imprisoned for more minor felonies, the racial disparity is glaring. For third-degree burglars who had no earlier prison sentences, the board released 41 percent of white inmates compared with 30 percent of blacks and Latinos.

The imbalance is especially stark for younger inmates. Among male prisoners under 25 who had no prior state prison sentences, the parole board released 30 percent of whites but only 14 percent of blacks and Latinos.

The Times did not have access to the full range of information the board took into account. This includes inmates’ time in county jail, full arrest histories, complete prison disciplinary records and whether required prison programs were completed.

Still, even before a black inmate takes a seat in the hearing room and utters a word, the odds are stacked against him. Guards punish black men in some prisons at twice the rate of whites, send them to solitary confinement more often and keep them there longer, a Times analysis of nearly 60,000 disciplinary cases from last year found. And bad prison records make it that much harder to be granted parole.

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Jaimie Davenport, left, and Billy Cassell were serving a maximum of six years for burglary, had served a prior sentence for theft and had other similarities. Mr. Cassell was set free, while Mr. Davenport was not.Credit...Department of Corrections and Community Supervision

In parole hearings that are hurried and often disorganized, the board members’ first impressions of an inmate — whether he is well spoken or inarticulate, neat or disheveled, black or white — can have an outsize impact on his future.

The Times reviewed transcripts of 109 parole hearings from the first quarter of this year, obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request. They all involved inmates guilty of burglary in the third degree, like Samuel McQuilkin, a black inmate with a long history of minor crimes who was convicted of stealing chicken nuggets from a school cafeteria.

It is often hard to pinpoint what the deciding factor is for commissioners. Some focus on an inmate’s criminal record or problems with drug abuse. Others are more interested in family ties.

In an interview process that is impersonal — 95 of the 109 hearings examined by the Times were conducted by video — any rapport an inmate can establish with board members is likely to help. This can work in a white inmate’s favor. A majority of commissioners are white, and like most of the white inmates in the New York system, they come from upstate.

Matthew Conley, a 27-year-old white college graduate from Eagle Bay, in the Adirondacks, was doing time for stealing golf carts from Mohawk Valley Country Club, in Little Falls, N.Y.

While hearings usually go quickly and focus on criminal and prison disciplinary history, W. William Smith, a commissioner who is also white, spent time reminiscing with Mr. Conley about summers spent white-water rafting in the Adirondacks.

“Were you employed by Tickner’s kayak and canoe rental in Old Forge?” Mr. Smith asked.

“I was,” Mr. Conley said.

Mr. Smith said he had done similar work. “That was the best job I ever had,” he said. “Long time ago.”

Mr. Conley was released.

The tone was different at the hearing for Mr. Davenport, the black inmate convicted of stealing cellphones. When it comes to an inmate’s criminal history, commissioners are supposed to consider convictions only, but G. Kevin Ludlow, a white board member from Utica, pressed him to confess any additional crimes he might have committed.

“How many burgs have you done that you haven’t been nailed for?” Mr. Ludlow asked. “There are others out there. What do you figure, five, six? How many?”

“No, sir, this is the only one,” Mr. Davenport said. “Not that it matters — it was a crime. But this is the only one.”

Though being a parole commissioner is considered a full-time job, only two days a week are devoted to hearing cases. Monday and Thursday are set aside for travel, and Friday is reserved for interviewing crime victims’ families.

Every week, four teams of two or three commissioners are dispatched around the state to administrative offices for video conferences or one of the few facilities where interviews are still conducted in person.

The condensed schedule leaves commissioners with little time to prepare. They typically see their cases on the morning of the hearings, when they arrive to find a cardboard box with a stack of folders placed beside their chair.

According to data from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, the board holds about 12,000 hearings a year and may conduct as many as 40 interviews a day. In practice, only one commissioner presides over a hearing, while the other two try to pay attention as they read files for upcoming cases, according to four former commissioners whose service on the board spanned from 2000 to 2014.

To save time, parole rulings are sometimes drafted beforehand. There are commissioners who come prepared with four or five decisions that they modify slightly to fit particular cases, said Robert Dennison, who was a commissioner from 2000 to 2007 and the board’s chairman for part of that time.

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Robert Dennison, a former chairman of the parole board, said there were commissioners who arrived at hearings with already drafted decisions they would alter to fit the case. “Some of the commissioners’ minds are made up before the guy comes into the room,” he said.Credit...Bryan Thomas for The New York Times

“Some of the commissioners’ minds are made up before the guy comes into the room,” he said.

Inmates complained that it often seemed as if what they had to say did not matter.

At his hearing in January, James McArdelle sounded surprised that the commissioners appeared to be paying attention. “The most I would like to say is thank you for actually listening,” he said at the time. “I have been through parole before. A lot of people don’t listen and have a prejudgment.”

The board has long been understaffed, and it now has 13 commissioners, though as many as 19 may be appointed.

Video conferences save time and may cut costs, but the former commissioners interviewed by The Times said they believed the inmates were being shortchanged.

“There are things you may not catch if it’s done by video,” said Henry Lemons, who was a commissioner from 2009 to 2012. “A person could have turned his whole life around and walks in holding a Bible. At the interview, I’m just seeing his shoulder, neck and face on the video screen.”

Former commissioners said it was common knowledge on the board that corrections officers sometimes trumped up disciplinary “tickets,” intentionally undermining an inmate’s chances of parole.

“The commissioners in some instances are savvy enough to know that somebody who hasn’t had a ticket in years that all of a sudden has a ticket right before a hearing, there might be something going on there,” said Milton Johnson, a former board member who was a Secret Service agent and served for a year ending in 2014.

While commissioners are allowed to take time to look into such cases, they almost always weigh inmates’ claims on the spot, Mr. Johnson said.

“It’s a very imperfect situation,” he said.

Inmates have little recourse to challenge parole decisions. They can appeal to the State Supreme Court, but judges in New York can only order a new parole hearing, not overturn the original decision. Even if the decision is sent back, the appeal process can take two years, and by then an inmate is usually entitled to a new hearing anyway.

Last year, a State Supreme Court judge ordered a new hearing for Rudolph Williams, a convicted murderer, and criticized the board for basing its denial on a “boilerplate list of factors” that included letters opposing his release when, in fact, there were no letters at all.

An inmate named John Kelly had his hearing last January.

“It says here, since Aug. 25, you’ve been taking your associate’s program in liberal arts,” said Gail Hallerdin, the lead commissioner for the hearing.

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At a hearing for John Kelly, left, parole commissioners had records for a different inmate with the same surname. They set him free but denied parole for Darryl Dent, right. Like Mr. Kelly, he is mentally ill, has a history of petty crime and was in prison for stealing.Credit...Department of Corrections and Community Supervision

“That’s not me,” Mr. Kelly responded.

“What is your first name?” Ms. Hallerdin said.

“John Kelly.”

Ms. Hallerdin checked her file. “That was for Thomas Kelly,” she said.

It was a jarring example of how unprepared the board can be. Commissioners have complained that they are not always given an inmate’s complete criminal history, and sometimes cannot obtain out-of-state records. At times, two or more inmates with the same name were included in the same case file, they said.

John Kelly, who was 59 at the time, explained that he had completed only the sixth grade. “I can’t read or write,” he said. He is classified by the corrections department as seriously mentally ill and was homeless when he was arrested for shoplifting at Duane Reade.

Despite the confusion, the hearing proceeded, with the commissioners deciding to release Mr. Kelly, who is white.

Darryl Dent, a black inmate who, like Mr. Kelly, has an extensive history of petty crime and is severely mentally ill, was not so fortunate.

When he stood before the parole board in March, he was serving five to 11 years for stealing a wallet in a Manhattan church, his eighth prison stint for petty theft.

“Some people would have given you a life sentence, even though it’s not what people call the crime of the century,” said Ellen Alexander, a commissioner.

“I was a little confused because I was hearing voices,” Mr. Dent explained. “They was telling me I should commit crimes before — to make money and get involved with girls and stuff — and I went along with it.”

For people like Mr. Dent, the parole process can be especially hard to navigate. They have trouble making an argument for themselves.

In an interview with a reporter at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in September, Mr. Dent said that during his hearing, he felt rushed and could not think of the right answers quickly enough.

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Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y.Credit...Bryan Thomas for The New York Times

He had trouble making eye contact during the interview, continuously rubbed his face and stuck out his tongue compulsively, a possible side effect of antipsychotic medications.

He looked older than his years, walked with a limp as he came into the visiting room and said that if released, he would pose no danger to anyone. “I wouldn’t be able to outrun the police,” he said. “I couldn’t lift a box.”

“I really am sorry for the crimes I committed,” he told the commissioners. “I’m tired of coming to jail. I’m 56 years old, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail.”

Mr. Kelly made an almost identical plea, explaining that he had had two strokes. “I’m done,” he said. “I’ll be 60 years old. I don’t want to die in prison.”

What tipped the scales in favor of Mr. Kelly and against Mr. Dent?

The commissioners who heard their cases? The inmates’ mental health on the day of the hearing? The fact that Mr. Kelly was a rare inmate to be interviewed in person, while Mr. Dent spoke via video? Race?

Whatever the reason, the white inmate doing time for shoplifting walked out of prison.

And the black inmate who stole the wallet was sent back to spend at least two more years behind bars. “Your release would be incompatible with the welfare of society,” the board’s decision said.

If there is one factor that drives the selection of commissioners, it is politics. Spots on the board are prime patronage gifts. Many board members have given generously to campaigns.

Diversity is seemingly an afterthought.

Since 2000, W. William Smith, who joined the board in 1996, has donated nearly $20,000, mostly to Republican campaigns in the Buffalo area. Commissioner G. Kevin Ludlow has given about $29,000 since 2004, primarily to conservative and Republican candidates, according to filings with the State Board of Elections.

Positions have also been given to Democratic supporters. Joseph Crangle, the son of a longtime Democratic leader, was appointed to the board by Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat, in 2008. Mr. Crangle and his family have donated nearly $14,000, mostly to Democratic candidates.

Another commissioner, Lisa Beth Elovich, is the daughter of a former Democratic political leader in Long Beach and a family friend of the former Republican senator Alfonse M. D’Amato. When she was appointed in 2006, she was married to Michael Avella, who was then a counsel to the Republican majority in the State Senate.

A request by The Times to interview individual commissioners was denied by the corrections department, which oversees the parole board.

Board members are nominated by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate. Selections are typically worked out ahead of time, and at the confirmation hearings nominees usually spend only a few minutes describing their credentials before being approved.

These hearings sometimes sound like reunions of upstate law enforcement veterans. At the 2012 hearing, State Senator Patrick M. Gallivan, then a Republican member of the corrections committee and a former sheriff of Erie County, backed the appointment of Marc Coppola, his former deputy sheriff.

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State Senator Patrick M. Gallivan, a former Erie County sheriff who in 2012 backed the appointment of his former deputy sheriff as a parole commissioner. Most members of the parole board are white and from upstate, and they tend to have law enforcement backgrounds. The board has also been used as a source of political patronage.Credit...Mike Groll/Associated Press

They joked about it. A committee member asked Mr. Coppola, “Was former Sheriff Gallivan a good boss?”

“Yes, he was,” Mr. Coppola said.

Henry Lemons, who was the lone black male commissioner for years, was not reappointed when his term expired in 2012, though he had strong credentials. He had spent 20 years with the New York Police Department, 10 years as a narcotics investigator with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, and five years as a deputy chief investigator for the state attorney general’s office.

He said in an interview that while he would have liked to be reappointed, he was unwilling to play politics.

“Commissioners who want to play this game must go around to their senators and get letters of support — that’s how it works,” he said. “My work should be enough. My decisions, I think, were solid. I didn’t want to have to ask people to write me letters saying, ‘Reappoint Henry Lemons.’ The result? Next year, I’m out.”

Instead, on June 20, 2012, the State Senate confirmed one white woman, four white men and a Hispanic woman, for a time leaving the board without a single black man.

There was a rare dissent that day. State Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson, a Democrat on the corrections committee at the time, declined to cast any confirmation votes.

“I have withheld my support of any of the candidates today in protest of the governor’s failure to appoint anyone of African descent,” said Ms. Hassell-Thompson, who is black and whose comments were recorded on video. “There is no way that I can sit here and vote for a board that does not constitute something that for me is about fairness to the numbers of prisoners that are in our prison system.”

None of those on the committee, which is controlled by Republicans, responded to Ms. Hassell-Thompson’s remarks.

In recent years, the board has become slightly more diverse — there is again a single black man, and the chairwoman, Tina Stanford, is also black — but nine of the 13 commissioners are white.

“The administration has been a strong proponent of bringing more diversity to the Board of Parole,” Jason Elan, a spokesman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, said in a statement. “This administration is committed to going even further and will continue to identify for appointment individuals with a broad range of professional expertise, such as social workers, defense attorneys, psychologists and others with criminal justice expertise.”

In June, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, nominated five more commissioners, including several minorities, but the corrections committee never held confirmation hearings.

Mr. Gallivan, who now leads the corrections committee, said the governor’s office was at fault for submitting the nominations only a few days before the legislative session ended.

Diversity would make the parole process fairer, said Mr. Lemons, who was named to the board by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat.

“If a commissioner is from the suburbs and is an attorney, he may not see things the way I did growing up in Bed-Stuy,” Mr. Lemons said, referring to the neighborhood in Brooklyn. “I’ve spoken to commissioners who couldn’t understand why a person committed a robbery. But you might interview the person and find out he or she has been on the streets since 16 or 17 because their parents were addicts and they had to live day by day.”

He said he and his colleagues also differed in their views of white-collar crimes.

“Many commissioners would say, ‘It’s just a money crime; no one was hurt,’” he said. “Well, I’d say the person defrauded this woman out of her money and made off with a quarter of a million dollars. What’s the difference between him and a kid snatching a purse with $15 in it, and he’s doing 10 years? To me, a person with some advantages in life, some education, I expect his conduct to be better.”

The promise of parole — early freedom for acknowledging mistakes and behaving well in prison — rarely lives up to reality. Around the country, 20 states have dismantled their boards altogether. A primary problem is the arbitrariness in decision making: Why do some inmates go free while others with nearly identical records stay in prison?

“The whole field of parole, when you shine a light on it, so much of it is unforgivable,” said Kevin R. Reitz, a director of the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice at the University of Minnesota Law School. Mr. Reitz was involved in revising the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code to recommend the elimination of parole release.

In 2014, a state judicial commission recommended the elimination of New York’s parole board, but the political leadership in Albany has taken no action.

New York State officials over the past 20 years have adopted a hybrid system of release that is less reliant on parole. About half the state’s inmates, including most drug offenders, now receive what is called a determinate sentence, a fixed period of incarceration with limited opportunity for early release. Instead of getting a two- to four-year sentence for selling drugs, an offender may receive a sentence of three years.

The Times analyzed a decade’s worth of state prison data and found that doing away with parole eliminated the racial disparity in release rates. But it also kept inmates of all races in prison longer — which makes determinate sentences unpopular with inmate advocates.

A central purpose of parole is to give inmates an incentive to rehabilitate themselves, said Jack Beck, a director of the Correctional Association of New York, a watchdog group empowered by the state to monitor prison conditions.

“Determinate sentences undermine the whole philosophy that incarceration should be a time for people to prepare themselves to integrate back into society,” Mr. Beck said.

In an effort to make the parole process more objective, New York implemented a risk-assessment tool called Compas in 2012 that seeks to measure an inmate’s chances for success upon release. Prisoners fill out a 74-item assessment form that includes their criminal history, education background and mental health status. They also answer a long list of hypothetical questions about managing money, avoiding risky situations and controlling their tempers.

Based on their answers, they are assigned scores of one to 10 that assess how likely they are to commit new crimes. Theoretically, the lower the score, the lower the risk.

Commissioners are required to take Compas into consideration, but they can ignore the results if they find that other factors, including the severity of the original crime, are more compelling.

In the 109 parole hearing transcripts reviewed by The Times, Compas scores were usually given a perfunctory mention but rarely appeared to be the deciding factor.

The Cuomo administration recently proposed regulations that would require a detailed written explanation from commissioners if they decided to ignore Compas. The regulations would also require the board to give special consideration to inmates who were convicted when they were juveniles and sentenced to a potential maximum of life in prison, taking into account their age at the time of the crime as well as “any demonstrated growth and maturity.”

But at a time when the state is specifying a detailed checklist of variables parole commissioners must consider, race is not even on the list. In fact, the state has never studied its effect on board decisions.

And so the inequities continue.

Braxton Bostic, a young black man, was 17 in 2014 when he and a group of friends stole money from a purse in a church. A judge gave him probation, but he missed two meetings with his probation officer and was sent to prison to serve one to three years.

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Robert Summa, left, has a record dating to 1992 for theft and drug possession. Braxton Bostic, right, stole money from a purse as a teenager and went to prison after missing meetings with a probation officer. He was denied parole. Mr. Summa was freed but arrested again soon after.Credit...Department of Corrections and Community Supervision

Robert Summa, a 49-year-old white man, has a record dating to 1992 for theft and drug possession. In 2003, he was convicted of mugging and robbing a 56-year-old woman and sent to prison for nine years. Within a year of being released, he was convicted again, for robbing a Staten Island deli, and was sentenced to 3½ to 7 years. He has spent 12 of the past 15 years in prison.

The men had similar prison disciplinary records. Mr. Bostic had one minor infraction for creating a disturbance and being out of place; Mr. Summa had two minor infractions, according to the hearing transcript. But he also had a certificate indicating that he had completed all of his programs, which Mr. Bostic did not have. Both said they had family and jobs waiting if they were released.

Mr. Bostic expressed remorse, telling the board that he had been hanging around with the wrong crowd. “There’s really no excuse for why I did it,” he said. “I was hurting my mother, my father. They’re the only ones sending me money and letters.”

Mr. Summa was more vague about his crimes. “It is actually not that I am stealing,” he told them. “It is that I buy these things from people in the neighborhood. I know they are stolen when I bought them, but for the price I get them, I can’t say no.”

The board sent Mr. Bostic back to prison for at least a year; he is incarcerated at Wyoming Correctional Facility.

Mr. Summa was freed in July.

But that did not last.

In September, he was caught on video robbing a Chinese restaurant on Staten Island.

He told the police he had been drinking heavily, blacked out and did not remember committing the robbery, though he pleaded guilty after seeing the security video.

Shortly afterward, a reporter visited him on Rikers Island to ask about the board’s decision to release him.

Mr. Summa said that given his lengthy criminal history, he had not expected it. “I was surprised,” he said.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: For Blacks Facing Parole, Signs of Broken System in New York. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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