Less Is More New York: A Status Report on Implementation. By Emily Singletary, Unchained; and gabriel sayegh, Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. March 1, 2022.
More than 31,000 people are on parole in New York State. Until September 2021, New York
held the distinction of imprisoning more people than any other state —at more than six times
the national average—for “technical violations” of parole rules, like missing an appointment
with a parole officer, being late for curfew, or testing positive for alcohol, marijuana, or other
drugs. Of the people on parole sent back to prison statewide in 2019, more than 7,000 of them
—85 percent—were re-incarcerated for technical parole violations.
The state’s parole system, like so many others, is marked by stark racial and ethnic disparities;
Black and Latinx people are locked up disproportionately for such violations. In 2019, Black
people were five times more likely and Latinx people were 30 percent more likely than white
people to be re-imprisoned for a technical parole violation. In New York City jails, Black people
were incarcerated for these types of violations at 12 times the rate of white New Yorkers. This
not only harms people and their families without any public safety gains but also drives up the
population in local jails and state prisons, wasting money. New York taxpayers have spent
more than $680 million annually to jail people for these noncriminal infractions.
Community groups—including people directly affected by parole and mass incarceration—
came together to address these problems and fix how New York State handles violations of
parole. The coalition focused on public safety and effective reentry through the Less Is More:
Community Supervision Revocation Reform Act (S.1144A – Benjamin / A.5576A – Forrest). The LessIsMoreNY Act was introduced in 2018, and more than 300 organizations joined with district attorneys, sheriffs, and former correctional officials to push for its passage. After years of persistent advocacy throughout New York, the state assembly and state senate passed the bill in June 2021. On September 17, 2021, Governor Kathy Hochul signed it into law.
Under Less Is More, people doing well on parole will be rewarded with time reduced from
their terms of supervision— called earned-time credits—giving them incentives to comply
with the rules. Only in the most serious and repeated cases will re-incarceration for technical
violations be an option, and people will get a lawyer and a speedy hearing before that can
happen. (For more details, see Tables 1 and 2 in the Appendix.) Any sanction of incarceration
will be capped at 30 days. Parole officers will have smaller, reasonable caseloads. The
hundreds of millions of dollars saved can be invested in housing, small business grants, family
programs, mental health care, and other important services. These steps will ease inequities
and improve public safety.
A major provision of the #LessIsMoreNY Act—the component limiting re-incarceration for technical violations— went into effect immediately when Governor Hochul signed the bill and announced that hundreds of people imprisoned at the Rikers Island jail complex for such noncriminal parole violations would be released immediately. Hundreds more were released from other jails across the state in subsequent weeks. The rest of the new law takes effect on March 1, with the exception of two provisions. The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) has until July 17 to recalculate time assessments (sanctions of incarceration) and release people who were re-incarcerated for violations that were sustained before the law was enacted last September. And DOCCS has until September 1 to implement the provision for earned-time credits, including calculating and awarding up to
two years of retroactive credits for every eligible person who is on parole when the provision is implemented. (Part 1 of this report explains these provisions in detail.
This report addresses the following:
– A summary of the main provisions of the Less Is More Act
– Progress and challenges with respect to implementation so far
– Next steps and recommendations
