Now, in the wake of Black Lives Matter as well as two pending New York State laws aimed at reforming the parole system, Fordham Law’s parole project is ramping up. With nearly 1,000 parole board transcripts and interviews, assessment reports, and appeal decisions online, all in a searchable, free, and publicly accessible database, it’s possible for families, advocates, attorneys, and, really, anyone, to discover which parole commissioners are making what decisions and exactly what happens in those once-mysterious parole and parole-appeal meetings, and to look for patterns and precedents that can aid anyone focused on parole be more effective and powerful in their efforts. “But more and more, there’s a new understanding that if we are going to decarcerate, parole is a key area of reform.”įordham Law School is on the cutting edge of that reform with its Parole Information Project, a unique database of parole documents that aims to make the archaic, Byzantine parole and parole-appeal process in New York State easier to navigate and more transparent. “Too often, with issues around mass incarceration, we look at the beginning of the system: who is getting arrested, the sentences they are getting,” says Rayner.
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Worse, most of the families and pro bono lawyers who are trying to help these prisoners will never know why-the process is that opaque. Overall, 12,000 incarcerated individuals are considered for parole in New York State every year, and a large majority are denied. And an earlier study by The New York Times found that fewer than one in six Black or Hispanic men were released at their first hearing, compared with one in four white men. An analysis by Albany’s Times-Union newspaper found that of 19,000 parole decisions made in New York State over the past two years, 41 percent of white inmates in New York State prisons were granted parole, while only 34 percent of Black inmates and 33 percent of Hispanic inmates were paroled. Just as the pandemic has revealed racial disparities in access to health care (and vaccines), dig into New York State’s parole process and you will find racial disparities in access to justice. That, she discovered, is far from the truth. When clinical associate professor of law Martha Rayner was first starting out as a criminal defense lawyer, she assumed, as many people do, that the way the parole process worked was fairly straightforward: “I thought that once someone had served their minimum sentence and they’d had a decent institutional record, they’d be granted parole,” says Rayner, who co-directs Fordham Law School’s Criminal Defense Clinic. This groundbreaking project demonstrates how the right information at the right time can lead to more just outcomes, not only for those behind bars, but, ultimately, for all Americans. Moreover, in partnership with the grassroots organization Parole Preparation Project, Fordham Law is making it easier for advocates and attorneys to obtain justice for those up for parole by making key parole documents available and searchable online. But thanks to Fordham Law’s Parole Information Project, a collaborative effort between the clinic and the Maloney Library, the parole system is getting the transparency it needs. It’s not easy to get to the bottom of a process that has long seemed arbitrary and opaque. But while reform has long been focused on the front end of the process-namely, conviction and sentencing-Professor Martha Rayner and her students in the Criminal Defense Clinic are attacking the problem in a new way, from the back end, by untangling New York State’s broken parole system. Fordham Law faculty, students, and alumni are leading the charge against the crisis of mass incarceration in this country, using innovative ways to turn the tide against a system that overwhelmingly punishes people of color.
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