As New York City lowers its jail population in the run up to closing Rikers Island, the number of New Yorkers who are sent to City jails on technical parole violations continues to climb.
According to the City's Independent Budget Office, the number of alleged parole violators in City jails increased by 20 percent from 2014 to 2018, while the total population fell by 23 percent, from 10,900 to 8,400, over the same period of time. As of last month, there were 676 people in City jails for parole violations, a decrease of around 3 percent compared to July 2018.
The IBO report notes that these people spend an average of 60 days held in City jails awaiting their day in parole court, not because they commit new crimes, but for reasons that span from staying out past curfew, missing an appointment, absconding, or smoking marijuana. The annual cost to NYC taxpayers: $190 million, according to the IBO, though other estimates are much higher.
A bill introduced by Manhattan State Senator Brian Benjamin this past session, called The Less is More Act, would strip parole officers of the power to take parolees straight to jail for alleged technical parole violations. The bill requires that local criminal courts to conduct bail hearings before someone is locked up for a parole violation, for serious or non-technical alleged violations that might warrant being sent back to prison.
The bill did not make it out of committee.
New York reincarcerates more technical violators than any other state except Illinois, according to a federal Bureau of Justice Statistics report that examined the 42 states that keep track of the numbers.
The rising population of alleged technical parole violators was the subject of a Gothamist story published this spring. Sources told us that parole officers feel pressure from their superiors in the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to send New Yorkers to jail for minor parole violations. Sources that have experience working at the state parole courthouse on Rikers Island said that even the judges, who are supposed to remain independent when deciding a parolee's fate, feel pressure to incarcerate people for parole violations.
"DOCCS is interested in only one thing: making sure they don't get blamed when a case goes bad," one current New York State parole officer working in the city told Gothamist. "So their solution is simply to lock everybody up that you can."
