EP 5: The Problem with Parole
RAPP Leaders
Too often, we define long prison sentences as "justice." But when we define incarceration as justice, it creates a big problem. Parole, or the end of a person's incarceration, can feel like we're losing out on justice. I know well the feelings connected to this. I have my own family's experience with homicide. And I have talked and listened to many other folks affected by homicide.
For this episode, we talk with Jamel and Jose, New Yorkers who served long prison sentences and were subject to New York's parole process. And we talk with Carol, who served on the Parole Board before leaving and becoming a critic of New York's system. And you know this podcast, we don't just talk about what is wrong with punishment. We talk about what can work better! Our guests talk about better approaches to transforming people and preventing future harm.
Useful Links:
Stanley Jamel Belamy and Jose Hamza Saldaña from Release Aging People in Prison were our primary guests for this episode.
Our guests are from the RAPP campaign: https://rappcampaign.com/current-campaigns/parole-justice/
Testimony by Jose about the need for parole reform: https://www.nysenate.gov/sites/default/files/jose_saldana_rapp.pdf
Carol Shapiro's testimony before legislature 22/23: https://www.nysenate.gov/sites/default/files/carol_shapiro_parole_.pdf
Carol Shapiro wrote this for the Marshall Project website:
An article about Carol and Jose together: https://www.law360.com/articles/1711522/the-unlikely-friendship-helping-drive-ny-parole-reform-fight
The CUNY Graduate Center partnered with the National Executive Council at the Columbia University Center for Justice to highlight structural incarceration. Here's their media release about the study.
When our guests talk about the failure of releasing people with more of a focus on punishing them more instead of supporting their reconnection, we've got a few resources.
This research about folks inside creating programs including Challenge to Change: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1632&context=gj_etds
Here’s an academic paper -- In NY’s Prisons, People Have Started Programs to Wrestle With Their Crimes: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1632&context=gj_etds
Here’s an interview with Jose Saldaña and Laura Whitehorn about RAPP and Challenge to Change:
Carol Shapiro mentions the special challenge of aging people in prison:
Here’s the recent research Carol mentions about growing aging populations in prisons.
Here’s a report about this problem from 2012—people knew this problem was getting worse.
Transcript:
Kathleen P (Host): This is the Problem with Punishment podcast. Spoiler alert: the problem with punishment is that it doesn't work. But the bigger problem is that we turn to punishment in every aspect of our lives, from our families to our neighborhoods, our boroughs, our city. We keep expecting punishment to make things better, when for the most part, it makes whatever problem we're addressing worse. Every time punishment fails, it hurts. Some people have taken the pain of that failure and turned it into purpose. I'm your host, Kathleen Pequeño, and I'll be talking with a range of New Yorkers who have experienced firsthand the failure of punishment and who found or created something better to do instead. From gun violence to child abuse to drug addiction, New York can lead the way in actually solving some of our most pressing problems. But first, we have to talk about the problem with punishment.
Welcome to our episode on the problem with parole. I want to start out by acknowledging that most of our listeners probably haven't had direct contact with the parole system. Most of what happens in the parole system happens out of sight, which is why I really wanted to do an episode about it. So in this episode, we're going to talk to the executive director and one of the member leaders of the release, Aging People in Prison Campaign, or RAPP, based here in New York. Both of the folks that we're going to talk to from RAPP went through the parole system in New York State.
In this podcast, we talk about problems in big ones, and in each episode, we also talk about what works better when it comes to parole. We're often talking about situations where there has been some serious harm, but the parole process by itself isn't actually going to heal or prevent harm. That's one of my beefs with it. The two folks from RAPP that were talking to were both doing work to address serious violence and harm while they were incarcerated. So in this episode, we're going to take some chances in terms of introducing you to multiple organizations. And we're going to try to explain parole, which is one of the more confusing things in our prison system. Parole lends itself to clickbait headlines, and it's easily manipulated to get people fired up with, I can't believe that person might get out of prison. A lot of my concerns with parole reflect my own experience with it. My experience as a family member of a murder victim. I've been in one of those families where you wake up one day and there are news stories saying that someone serving time for the murder of your loved one might get released. Two people far away from New York served long sentences for my brother's murder, which happened in 1985. Both of them were eventually released from prison, so I know what that feels like.
But I first learned about parole from incarcerated men, mostly Latino men, mostly older than me, who were serving time for serious and violent crimes, and some of them were subject to parole. I hadn't really understood the parole system, but I did know at the time that the folks serving sentences for my brother's murder might eventually wind up getting a review. So these long timers explained to me how parole was supposedly set up, and then how it was set up in reality. I went to go see for myself, and I sat through a couple a dozen hearings. This was in another state and another time. But the problems of parole are pretty consistent across these systems. In all the cases, parole is supposed to be about public safety, but for the most part, it's about deciding how much punishment is enough. And it's never enough.
Let's start with the basics. When you're sentenced, you can get either a determinate sentence, which means a specific time, say one year, say six months, six years, or a judge can sentence you to a range, which means that someone else later decides what the entire length of the sentence is. It's supposed to be based on a review of whether or not you present a danger to society, and if you don't present a danger to society, you can be released. In New York in 2025, we've got over 20,000 people who are subject to parole review of their sentences.
Jose and Jamel, who will meet in this episode, were both part of that system. At any given time, thousands of incarcerated people are up for review. This doesn't mean that they leave the prison wearing a Hawaiian shirt and waving and never looking back. It often means the chance to continue serving their sentence in community instead of in prison.
A lot of the parole process happens out of sight, and the closest thing you get to being in sight is a parole hearing. These play out the same in a lot of states and over many years, generally in a drab little room, because hearings usually take place inside of prisons. It's probably not a window. There may or may not be a cage inside the room for the person who is being reviewed to sit in, depending on the age of the prison they're in. A small group of people sit at a hearing table. The person comes into the room or enters the hearing, almost always alone. It's unusual for people to have legal representation. There in the prison they've been confined in. They possibly have not left that prison for decades, unless it was to go there from another prison. You can see from their head to their feet the nervousness. These rooms are small, so you can't get away from it. Pretty much anything anyone is feeling in the room, anger, fear, impatience, hunger, you can't get away from it. Members of the board. Their job is to cram as many of these hearings as they can into a single day. And as the day goes on, you feel their exhaustion. So do the people filing in and out, one at a time, coming in for brief hearings to decide their fate and how brief? 15 minutes. And then after 15 minutes, in a drab little room, you walk out and the parole board stays. They get ready for the next court hearing. Later you get a letter. Now, if you get hit, if they say you're not getting out this time, you wait two years before you get another chance for another 15 minute hearing. That's the parole process as it stands for now.
For this episode, the folks we talked to went before the board multiple times before they were released. And we're also going to talk to a former New York State Parole board member who's written extensively about her experience on the board, where she's called it a conveyor belt for most episodes. I travel somewhere in the five boroughs. For this episode, I went to Midtown because change is happening everywhere. I went to the Midtown office of the release Aging People in Prison campaign. They're going to start with what it was like when they were first living with the problem with parole.
Jose (Hamza) S: My name is Jose. I'm also known as Hamza Saldana, and I'm the executive director of RAPP, and I'm one of the co-founders of Challenge to Change.
Stanley (Jamel) B: My name is Stanley Jamel Bellamy. I'm the New York City community organizer for Release Aging People in Prison campaign, commonly known as RAPP. I'm also, while I was on the inside, a facilitator for Challenge to Change.
Jose (Hamza) S: I first realized that parole was really a failed system for us is that I'm noticing that just about everybody I know, it doesn't matter what accomplishments they had or didn't have, everybody was being denied. Well, when we talk about parole, we talk about a system that was originally designed to evaluate a person's readiness to return back to society. You know, and Pataki changed that by executive order, not by codifying any law, but by executive. He issued an executive order that all violent felons, this is his words. "All violent felons belong in prison." And the reason why he did he campaigned off that is because a guy who was convicted of a murder was released on parole and was arrested for committing another murder. So he campaigned off that particular case and never apologized to the community that he lied to, because that person was proven to be innocent of the second homicide. And when he campaigned like this, he changed the system. It wasn't the best system from the very beginning. Because the problem really is that these long prison sentences, that's where we begin the long prison sentences. And then at the back end, the parole board perpetually denying parole, denying parole is really extending the time that a person was allegedly sentenced to. So if we start out with minimizing the prison sentence, at the very least, then we have a better chance of the back end working a lot better, and then we let people out at a time where they can be productive and be a benefit to society.
Stanley (Jamel) B: It was in 1994, when Governor Pataki came into office. He changed the whole dynamics of New York state parole system prior to 1994 or 95, before he became governor, when you went to the parole board, they would tell you, we're hitting you with six months. Bring us X, y, z when you come back. And when those individuals came back with x, y, z, they was released after that. When Pataki came into office, it was really nothing. You can do whatever you brought them. They stopped telling you what to bring us in six months, eight months, whatever, however long they hit you at the board. And that's when I know it was a problem, because they started hitting everybody that was worthy made exceptional strides towards transformation. They was hitting them with two years, all the six months, eight months, 12 months, all those went out the window and everybody was getting hit with 24 months.
Jose (Hamza) S: When we say hit, we mean denied and held for another 24 months.
Kathleen P (Host): Let's circle back to what the concept of parole was originally, even though some folks would say it never has done a great job at that either. Someone is carefully weighing the serious decision to deprive another human being of their freedom for an extended period of time. And here's where I'm going to say a very basic thing someone who worked in a prison told me years ago, "people are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment." Whenever we talk about prison, we have to remember that not having your freedom is an intense level of deprivation. It's punishment in and of itself to be forced to live in prison. So the length of the sentence itself matters and is serious.
Jose (Hamza) S: When you're sentenced to 15 years to life. The assumption is that the 15 year mark, you will appear before the parole board, not to be denied and held indefinitely, but for release. Serious release consideration. And if you met all the criteria, if you successfully completed all the programs required, then the presumption is real. You will be released.
Kathleen P (Host): They mentioned the parole board. New York State's parole board has room for 19 people on it. And at the moment, in early 2025, there are 16 members. We talked to one former member of the parole board, Carol Shapiro, who served on the New York State Parole Board from 2017 to 2019.
Carol S: People don't know what parole is. I don't even think people who serve as commissioners on the parole board know parole is what's the back end of a system. That is not very clear. And of course, it is different by state. I have a lot of experience with parole. My first position was at Lorton Prison in 1978, and I started the first pre-release project there, working with the white House and other people. And that was my first experience with what parole is, and was where people were going back to their communities with very little support. I had founded a nonprofit called Family Justice. It started out as La Liga de la Familia, where I tested an idea in the Lower East Side about shifting the paradigm of our justice system to think about social networks and a strength-based approach to breaking cycles of involvement in the criminal justice system.
Kathleen P (Host): Carrol has a lot of different experiences in the criminal legal system and working in the community on public safety. Some of the research and those experiences informed her time on the parole board. Now, that's been one of the demands of the campaign that RAPP has been advancing for years. And they've made progress to have parole board members who are not only former law enforcement or prosecutors, but people who bring other skills and experience as well, because these folks will use a different lens to do the job of reviewing sentences. At some point, it's going to be relevant to know what the crime of conviction was. But 10 or 20 years later, it can't be. The only thing that we talk about. The crime won't have changed. It was awful when it happened. It's likely still quite awful. The past can't change, but people do change. And Carol and I talked about the most important question to ask when it comes time to review someone for release.
Carol S: Who is this person today that we are meeting? It is not the index crime or the multiple crimes people have committed, and we can't seem to get past that because we are unlike a lot of the rest of the world addicted to punishment in this country, and it doesn't tend to shift, in my experience on the parole board reinforced that.
Kathleen P (Host): So in this podcast, we definitely talk about the problems with punishment, and we talk about what people are doing that is better. So when it comes to parole, then what would work better has to be something that would work inside prison walls. And as it happens, Jose Saldana created something inside prison walls, a program called Challenge to Change. And I want you to hear the story about how that program came to be.
Jose (Hamza) S: Challenge to Change was actually evolved from a very small incident that happened at Shawangunk Correctional Facility. You got football fans and then you got movie fans. The majority of the people are football fans. So a guy that wants to want to watch a movie, he gets up and changes the TV. Now that normally would cause a riot. It could just explode. So this is the long, aggressive debate going on. And we finally got the football fans to win. But those of us who've been discussing these issues in our communities and what we can do about it, talk about that. What just happened there? And we boiled it down to someone felt that they was entitled to make a decision for everybody. And we identified that as the trait that we adopted in the streets. And then then we said, well, what other choice do we have to challenge as bankrupt, counterproductive, and a Challenge to Change or evolve as a result of that? The discussions went on and on and on. We were writing down as much as we can notes from these discussions. And Challenge to Change came to address what we call criminal thinking. And we say we identify criminal thinking as thinking that totally disregards the rights of others. We conceptualize the lessons that we were learning and then we apply them to ourselves.
Jose (Hamza) S: We have this type of behavior that completely disregards the rights of others. Do we ignore people's humanity and how we do it? So in addressing this among ourselves, we talk about a small group of 5 or 6 people every day discussing these issues. And then as time went on, three of us decided to conceptualize everything, put it in a little handbook, snuck it into the print shop, printed a handbook, and we called the Challenge to Change handbook. And from there, we facilitated the 18-week workshop.
State violence is what we were originally having discussions around. And now we started having discussions around interpersonal violence. And we looked at what would the community say? We had to consider what do those who've been harmed by interpersonal what do they have to say about what should be prioritized state violence or interpersonal violence in addressing it? So we knew that we had to address it with equal force. We came to that conclusion, and this is why we developed this, so that people can first, if we want to be a leader in addressing the ills in our society and hold those accountable, then you have to hold yourself accountable first and foremost. That's just becoming. And we use Malcolm X as a model of leadership.
Stanley (Jamel) B: One of the main things from the Challenge to Change program is what we call purging, where individuals would have to get on the hot seat, y'all put them on the hot seat, and we call it purging. The concept of purging is that we understood that if we didn't purge those old thoughts, behaviors, belief systems and values, that when we ran into a situation, all the new information, everything that we got, that we ran run into a situation and this new information don't address it or can't address it, we will revert back to that old way we would handle that situation. Social purging was very important. You had to get rid of that because then you would think about new ways of addressing a situation instead of reverting back, because you know, what they say with insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and thinking about getting a different result.
Carol S: These programs that a lot of people like Jose and others in prison started are amazing to help people go through a transformative experience, to take responsibility, to explore themselves, and also to understand their view. I mean, it's no accident why most countries don't consider you an adult until you're 26, because of brain development. That's true all over Europe. Studies have shown your brains are not fully developed until you're 26. But it's why in New York they started, you had a series of different questions to ask if you committed the crime as a juvenile 18 or younger, and you start to get a sense of what that person's life was, then it's very important to ask, because a lot of horrific crimes should be for people who are still incarcerated in their 70s. They joined other means to get support they needed. Their mothers were potentially addicted to drugs. I mean, it's very important to understand the context of what a person was living through in order to commit some of these really horrible crimes.
Jose (Hamza) S: When I was arrested, I had four children, so I have a vested interest in seeing that they're safe as they're growing up and coming to visit me. And I'm seeing that things is happening in our communities that impact them. Then as a father, I have to be able to protect them. So all this comes into play, and this is why from a program like a Challenge to Change was really dealing with changing the thinking and the behavior of people who are incarcerated. Then Jamel came up with an extension to this called Civic Duty Initiative.
Kathleen P (Host): It comes back to remembering that people are more than just the worst thing they've ever done. They're connected to families, neighborhoods, and communities on the outside.
Stanley (Jamel) B: The Civic Duty Initiative's whole mission is to transform dysfunctional neighborhoods into vibrant and productive communities. And we do that by changing the mindset and the behaviors. One of my mentors and all of our mentors said that all behavior is dictated by values. If you want to change somebody's behavior, you need to change what they value most. And so all our programs is value based.
Kathleen P (Host): I agree. Our behaviors, our decisions are based on our values, which is why when our values say that we're going to start with punishment, it kind of paints us into a corner.
Carol S: We should be adopting values that we don't have in this country. All you have to do is spend time in Holland, in Norway, in Sweden, in Denmark. I even worked for Her Majesty's Home Office. Pretty draconian there too, but nothing like the US. We do not invest in our youth and communities that are struggling. We all would like crime to be prevented. We don't pay living wages. We have access to guns that nobody else does. We grow up with lots of violence, drug use.
Kathleen P (Host): For people who are really interested in stopping serious and violent crime, we have to be able to talk about more than one thing at a time. We have to be able to talk about interpersonal violence, and we also have to be able to talk about state violence. Violence that's happening on a bigger level to entire communities, affecting a lot of people all at once. And if we're going to talk about state violence, we have to talk about mass incarceration.
Jose (Hamza) S: Mass incarceration impacts our communities more than any other community, but interpersonal violence also impacts our communities. So when we're talking about to people and people in our communities, the first thing they're going to say, but what about the guy that killed so-and-so? These are real concerns, very real concerns. So we have to have these discussions with them until we was able to convince them that this punishment is hurting you, not to the degree or the same way it hurts a person inside, because you never get a chance to heal from the harm that you suffered. The state does not care that you are suffering for years and sometimes decades, as a result of harm that was done to you. But we convinced them that we were the ones who created the programs that have changed people from ever committing this type of harm again.
Stanley (Jamel) B: We made them believe they have a vested interest because we talk about the return on investment. That's why you got to use the business model that individuals are incarcerated. Statistics say that 90-something percent of the individuals going to be released back to your community. So you should have a concern how these individuals are returning. And so you should take a vested interest because prisons are way upstate, out of the jurisdiction of the community. So out of sight, out of mind. But though we're out of sight and out of mind, eventually we're coming home. How we come home should be a concern of yours. And so once they buy into that concept that you have a vested interest, and then we begin to make the individuals on the inside understand that they have a vested interest, because, again, the likelihood of somebody leaving prison, going home to my community and run into my mother, my niece, my sister, my brother, whatever is more ten times greater than somebody living upstate in those where the prisons are located. So therefore, I don't want nobody going home that I think is going to knock somebody over the head. So I have a vested interest in changing this individual's mindset and his behavior and then sending him home, preparing him to go home. And that's the way we talked about vested interests on both ends.
Kathleen P (Host): Jose and Jamel, and so many other incarcerated people have been creative and diligent to develop these programs and maintain them over the years. And then, when people go before the board and they can say that they've changed, who do you think gets the credit?
Jose (Hamza) S: People think that the Department of Corrections has something to do with people transforming their lives. That's such a misconception, because if it wasn't for us and those who came before us, we actually get false credibility to the system because they claim that those who came out are now out there doing grea,t and our communities as a result of punishment, and that's just a fallacy.
Stanley (Jamel) B: That's the sad reality right there because they get the credit. But we are doing it because we realize that these individuals and like ourselves, are returning to our communities, and we took ownership of our communities, and we have a vested interest and concern how individuals come back.
Kathleen P (Host): I've seen the impact, the positive impact of these programs created inside prisons by incarcerated people. The programs are effective, and people who work in the system know it. But not everyone has access to the programs. And we've got a growing problem inside because there are so many people serving decades long sentences.
Carol S: I have a piece that talked about how in I think it was 2030, 20% of our seniors will get geriatric care in our prisons.
Jose (Hamza) S: When you see people around you dying in their late 50s, early 60s, you got to wonder why. And there came a point where and then as that was being denied parole, there came a point where I did consider the possibility. And I had to really at least emotionally prepare for that. Nobody wants to die in prison, but it's real. People were dying in prison at a relatively young age. The average age is 58 years old. So when I reached the late 50s, I'm saying, oh, if I survive another year, maybe I can get out. But I accepted that if I don't ever get out, I'm going to die. And I told this to a parole commissioner because I was so frustrated. I said, "Listen, you do what you want. I can't control that. But I'm going to die an honorable man, whether it's in a prison cell or with my family. And you can't control that."
Stanley (Jamel) B: Me? I was given the 62.5 years of life sentence. So the possibility of me coming home was just way down the road. I never even thought about it, but I made a vow that if I couldn't get out, I would help others prepare them to go out. And when they used to go home, they would always say to me, what can we do for you? And I would say, just don't come back. I don't care if you just go out there and take care of your family. Don't come back. That's the most you can do for me. And a lot of these individuals that went through our programs are now directors, vice presidents. They have their own organizations, and they look back and they hold what they went through them programs, how them programs impacted them and shaped them and prepared them to come out here and become that civil minded person that we talked about.
Kathleen P (Host): And now both Jose and Jamel are part of not only helping people change their behaviors on an individual basis, they are both active in the campaigns to address the problems with parole. Let's start with one problem, which I mentioned earlier the problem of who's serving on the parole board.
Jose (Hamza) S: They were appointed by the governor, confirmed by the Senate up until RAPP told the senators. You don't have to confirm the person. And we're giving you reasons why you shouldn't confirm this guy. He's a former detective. He's a former sheriff. They're accustomed to punishment. They're involved in the whole punishment scheme. Then they started for the first time in New York City history, not confirming certain people that the governor appointed. Doesn't make sense to put somebody who's a career correctional officer for 30 years. Now he wants to be a parole commissioner. And those are the ones that were just denying parole over and over. They made a career of denying parole.
Kathleen P (Host): That's one piece of the RAPP campaign. Who serves on the parole board? Then there's also the central question. How are people being evaluated to decide if it's time for them to leave prison?
Jose (Hamza) S: People like me and Jamel. We prepare ourselves for this interview. A life saving interview for us. Most people didn't. They thought that it was useless because they wasn't going to make it anyway. We got our families involved. All my kids started writing letters for me. They got their classmates to write letters for me. They went out to the churches writing letters for me. So I have all this community support and I'm going before the probe with college degrees. We're even creating these programs— they had the evidence of me creating these programs that helped me and countless others. And then the parole looked at it like, yeah, okay. But that does not diminish the crime you were convicted of. Nothing does. If you're making a decision based on something that is never going to change, then you're actually resentencing the person. And this is the problem that we're trying to solve with one of the bills that will stop them from making a decision on the one thing that no one can change.
Kathleen P (Host): One thing to remember about long prison sentences, the sorts of sentences that the parole board decides, is that a long prison sentence by itself does not bring healing. A long prison sentence by itself isn't going to provide public safety. Often these long sentences are just for the sake of punishment. So we'll turn back now to the question I often ask people. In your experience, how well do you think punishment has been working here?
Jose (Hamza) S: One thing that is really critical in this discussion is just accept the reality, the truth, that it doesn't work. It didn't work when we was kids. Why wouldn't you think it would work when we're adults? Punishment does not work.
Carol S: If it worked well, it would incentivize people to really work hard to improve themselves. It's an opportunity to show you've transformed and aren't the same person. I mean, I always tell people on the probe when I was a commissioner, you know, I can barely remember what I did and when I was 20 years old. The only reason you keep telling the same story is it's in print.
Stanley (Jamel) B: Punishment does not work. We also created another program. Proposal is Alternative to Incarceration to deal with again addressing the adverse childhood experiences at the beginning. And there's a whole litany of stuff we wanted to do because we understood that incarcerating people was not working. If incarceration was working, we would have some of the safest communities in the country. And so it's not working. So we have to look at other alternatives.
Kathleen P (Host): Like Jamel said, if mass incarceration were going to prevent violence, we would have already created the safest neighborhoods in New York City because they are neighborhoods where tons of people have been sent to faraway prisons for decades. But those aren't the safest neighborhoods.
Maybe the biggest problem with parole is the illusion it's created—that we can just lock people up, make them disappear, and they'll take the problems of violence with them. And we won't have terrifying crimes anymore. Everything will just be great. That's not true.
There are a lot of things that go into creating moments where people really hurt each other. I've sat and listened to many stories from other family members of murder victims and survivors of other forms of violence. And honestly, fear and indifference are so often part of those stories. That includes interpersonal violence, like homicides and also state violence like mass incarceration. It's worth doing the hard work to prevent fear and indifference from making decisions for us about how we're going to treat each other.
And if you want to get a sense of what that hard work is, pay attention to Jose, Jamel and the other members and leaders of RAPP, because by addressing the problems of mass incarceration, by confronting a system that is based on fear and indifference. They're doing important work to end violence on every level.
This podcast was produced in Brooklyn, New York. The unceded ancestral lands of the Lenape and Canarsie people. We thank all the ancestors for caring for this land over the generations, and we're committed to the work of creating a shared future that includes the native communities that are still here, and all the people who call this land home.
Thank you to Jose Saldana and Jamel Bellamy of the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign, or RAPP. Get on their list to learn more about the problems with parole and the things you can do about it. Their website is https://rappcampaign.com/ and thank you to Carol Shapiro for sharing her experience on the board with us. Challenge to Change and Civic Duty Initiative are programs in the long tradition of incarcerated people creating amazing things under the most difficult of circumstances. We have links to learn more about them on the page for this episode. And with that in mind, I also want to thank John Castro and los hermanos at Oregon State Penitentiary, who first invited me in to learn about and work on the problems with parole.
Thanks to our podcast team, Doctor Candice King, Reverend Doctor Sharon White-Harrigan, and Tess Weiner. Thank you to our production partner, JuleCave Studios, and our creative partner, Julius Shepard-Morgan. I'm your host, Kathleen Pequeño. This podcast is a project of the Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, with support from Trinity Wall Street. You can learn more about the collaborative and our other creative projects at BeyondPunishment.Org. Thanks so much for listening.
