WBFO s Thomas O Neil-White reports. But as New Yorkers United for Justice Executive Director Alexander Horwitz tells it, sentencing inequalities along racial and socio-economic lines lead to problems in post-release supervision.
“New York’s parole system is costly, it is broken and it is racist, he said.
NYUJ is a bi-partisan criminal justice reform coalition.
“New Yorkers spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year on a system that fails to deliver on its actual purpose,” Horwitz said. “Which is to safely bring home people from incarceration, permanently.”
The coalition launched a statewide public campaign to urge the state legislature and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to make parole reform a top priority for the 2021 legislative session.
USA Today Network The Gowanda Correctional Facility in Cattaraugus County, seen on Feb. 2, will close at the end of March.
(Provided photo â (Rochester) Democrat & Chronicle) The Clinton Annex prison in Dannemora, seen in June 2015, will close at the end of March.
(Enterprise photo â Tom Salitsky)
The Clinton Annex prison in Dannemora, seen in June 2015, will close at the end of March.
(Enterprise photo â Tom Salitsky) Four days before Christmas last year, Jamie Richmond learned the prison in Watertown near her home would be closing. Richmond and her husband own Carson’s Pizzeria and Bar in Adams Center, a small hamlet about 10 miles south of Watertown. Prison employees are a huge part of their regular customer base.
New York State Team
One of the entrances at Livingston Correctional Facility in Sonyea. The medium-security prison opened in 1991 and closed in 2019. Photo: Democrat & Chronicle
Four days before Christmas last year, Jamie Richmond learned the prison in Watertown near her home would be closing. Richmond and her husband own Carson s Pizzeria and Bar in Adams Center, a small hamlet about 10 miles south of Watertown. Prison employees are a huge part of their regular customer base.
And sure, she said, the closure will affect their business. But it affects her family, too, because her two brothers work at the prison as well.
They’re not forgotten souls’: New York prisons see spike in COVID cases, deaths Tiffany Cusaac-Smith, New York State Team
New York prison advocates protest during COVID-19 outbreak at Elmira Correctional Facility UP NEXT
Locked up in a coronavirus-stricken prison, Claude Johnson was concerned about his health if his parole was denied again.
After spending more than three decades behind bars, the 60-year-old was dealing with the death of a good friend of COVID-19 at another prison. Johnson had witnessed the near impossibility of social distancing at the Fishkill Correctional Facility in Dutchess County and the lack of protective gear given to an imprisoned individual as he nursed himself back to health after dealing with a likely case.