Detailing how sex offenders in New York can imprisoned long past their maximum sentences
The Nation has this notable lengthy new article detailing just how some New York offenders end up incarcerated well past the end of their actual sentences. The article’s full title previews the key points: “They Were Supposed to Be Free. Why Are They Locked Up?: No one wants a person convicted of a sex offense in their neighborhood. So New York keeps them in prison long past their release dates.” Here are some excerpts:
[Jory] Smith is one of hundreds of New Yorkers over the past decade whom the state has imprisoned past their maximum sentences, often for months or years. It’s not because the judicial system is afraid that he’ll commit another crime—a judge had determined that Smith’s “risk of re-offense is low.” He is caged there, essentially, because he is homeless.
In 2015, Smith was imprisoned for sexually abusing an 8-year-old girl, and state legislation severely restricts where people with such sex-offense convictions are allowed to live. With few politicians willing to publicly defend people who have been found guilty of sex crimes, authorities have been free to push the boundaries of how to enforce the law.
The state redesignates people convicted of sex offenses who have served their maximum prison sentences as parolees. But unlike others on parole, some of them don’t get released. They’re kept incarcerated until they can find a legal place to stay or until their parole is up — for Smith, that’s August 2025. They wear normal prison uniforms. They abide by prison visitation, meal, and recreation rules. Most sleep in general population units.
Many of them also work a prison job. And the state holds most of their wages in an account that they can access only upon their undetermined and mostly unknowable release date. For his work assignments, Smith receives between $5 and $10 a week. He called it “slave wages from slave labor.”
This system of prolonged incarceration started nearly a decade ago—and the number of people subjected to it has increased. In 2015, it was 37, according to data obtained by Appellate Advocates and shared with New York Focus and The Nation. By 2017, the number had risen to more than 100, and in the first half of 2019, it was 60 — almost 8 percent of the “parolees.”
New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS, which runs the state prison and parole systems, wouldn’t offer updated annual numbers but said that, as of late July, it was holding 49 people past their release dates. In a statement, the department said that it “follows the letter of the law” when it comes to confining people convicted of sex offenses.
Lawmakers have exacerbated the situation. And courts have so far greenlighted the practice — though that could soon change. A judicial shake-up in New York this year saw one of the few people in power who was willing to criticize it become head of the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. And a years-in-the-making lawsuit challenging the practice is set to hit the court’s docket.
That case might be the last hope for change until the politics around sex crimes shift. “It’s very sensitive — people have very emotional reactions to sex offenders,” said James Bogin, a senior supervising attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York and part of the team working on the Court of Appeals case. “The idea that the end of the sentence doesn’t mean anything, that it doesn’t even lead to any change in your circumstance, is pretty unbelievable.”