Beyond The Curve

08/04/2017

This is inhumane!! This kind of punishment must be stopped!!

A short video about one man's experience in solitary confinement. Featuring Five Mualimmak Produced during re3storyhack http://www.fifteendays.org/ Video…

07/13/2017

New Parole Commissioners Voted: What Could This Mean For the Future? By Tristan Darshan For those of you who do not know, new parole commissioners have been appointed to the New York State Board of Parole. This would seem truly exciting initially to anyone that is appalled by mass incarceration or affiliated with parole injustices but one must not be too optimistic about the future of the parole board. [ 339 more words ]

http://www.beyondthecurve.org/new-parole-commissioners-voted-what-could-this-mean-for-the-future/

New Parole Commissioners Voted: What Could This Mean For the Future? By Tristan Darshan For those of you who do not know, new parole commissioners have been appointed to the New York State Board of…

07/11/2017

http://osb.mx/programs/reconnecting-families/children-youth-services/youth-action-council/ride-for-rights-2017-flyer/?utm_source=Ride+for+Rights&utm_campaign=5a16509ad7-Osborne_Launches_FamilyWorks_Harlem_3_2_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1ae7c78f51-5a16509ad7-172437629

03/10/2017

A Call To Justice: The Next Generation Parole Problem By: Tristan Darshan When one hears the word ‘justice,’ what does one associate with it? Most would agree that the country hailed as the standing defenders of true justice is the United States of America. Yet the concept of justice is only negligibly enforced in two of our country’s largest institutions, the prison and parole system. [ 1,001 more word ]

http://www.beyondthecurve.org/a-call-to-justice-the-next-generation-parole-problem/

A Call To Justice: The Next Generation Parole Problem By: Tristan Darshan When one hears the word ‘justice,’ what does one associate with it? Most would agree that the country hailed as the standin…

12/15/2016

Parole Reform Groups Say Proposed New Rules Don't Go Far Enough ALBANY - Groups frustrated at the state's unyielding attitude toward releasing some inmates has urged the Board of Parole to go further with new regulations meant to produce more favorable parole determinations. The proposed regulations would base inmate release decisions more on prospective risk to the public and less on the nature of the crime that led to incarceration ( [ 108 more words ]

http://www.beyondthecurve.org/parole-reform-groups-say-proposed-new-rules-dont-go-far-enough/

Parole Reform Groups Say Proposed New Rules Don’t Go Far Enough ALBANY – Groups frustrated at the state’s unyielding attitude toward releasing some inmates has urged the Board of …

09/23/2016

Work Release for Violent Offenders Matter -- by T Darshan Violent offenders (VO’s) are not eligible for work release in New York State. This should inspire fear, not relief. Note that over 90% of all VO’s are coming home. Is it, then, better for our community to throw them from the cave of isolation into the wilderness of freedom, or – applying sensible provisions — prepare them with some measure of freedom through work release? [ 1,028 more word ]

http://www.beyondthecurve.org/work-release-for-violent-offenders-matter/

Work Release for Violent Offenders Matter — by T Darshan Violent offenders (VO’s) are not eligible for work release in New York State.  This should inspire fear, not relief.  Note that over 9…

09/02/2016

“The Welcome Home From Family" by Joseph Cabrera It is the last visit before you are going to be released. Your family is there, and the occasion is truly a joyous one. After the visit, you go back to your unit and resume counting the days until you are set free. Anticipation is a very powerful emotion. But what realities might anticipation block? [ 364 more words ]

http://www.beyondthecurve.org/the-welcome-home-from-family-by-joseph-cabrera/

“The Welcome Home From Family” by Joseph Cabrera It is the last visit before you are going to be released.  Your family is there, and the occasion is truly a joyous one.  After the visit, you…

08/30/2016

Building a Prison-to-College Pipeline
by Russell Berman

“They’re either going to be released and go back to the streets and go back to a life of crime, and go back to being a menace to society, or they’re going to be released with some real skills and possibly even a college degree…” Education Secretary Arne Duncan explains the thinking behind the new Pell Grant initiative. THE ATLANTIC...

Read more... Click on link below...

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/arne-duncan-pell-grants-prisoners/400565/

“Having an inmate receive Pell grants doesn’t take a nickel from anybody else,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan says.

06/08/2016

“Governor Cuomo could do something right now"
ISSA KOHLER-HAUSMANN of New Haven, Connecticut

In Miller v. Alabama, the United States Supreme Court, announced a legal principle that social science, neuroscience and common sense had long recognized: juveniles have “diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform” such that “children are constitutionally different from adults for purposes of sentencing.” Relying on that principle, the court held that imposing a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole on juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, even for the crime of murder.
As Dana Goldstein’s heart-wrenching article points out, New York State is one of only two states that automatically charge juveniles in adult criminal court. There is an emerging consensus that this is an unsupportable practice, even though some lawmakers are resisting legislation to change it. But there is another problem with the way juvenile offenders are treated, one that Governor Cuomo and Attorney General Schneiderman could do something about right now without waiting for the Legislature to act. They could change the way the Board of Parole assesses individuals who commit crimes as juveniles when considered for release after serving their minimum sentence.
The Board of Parole’s appointed role in our criminal justice system is not to subjectively decide how much time they believe a person ought to serve in prison. Rather, their role is to assess whether an individual meets the statutory release criteria, namely whether he or she has been rehabilitated and does not pose a substantial risk to public safety. Currently, the Board of Parole has no policy or regulation instructing them to take the age of an offender into account when evaluating the crime at a release hearing. The Board regularly holds juvenile offenders to an adult standard when those people come before the Board. And they rely on that assessment as the basis for denying parole, often for years after the person has completed his minimum sentence. The State is actively appealing one case where a judge found the Board applied a constitutionally inappropriate standard to assess a man who committed a murder as a juvenile. According to data compiled by the Parole Hearing Data Project, there were more than 250 parole hearings in New York over the past two years for individuals who were 19 or younger when they entered prison and are serving indeterminate life sentences.
The state should acknowledge the moral and constitutional imperative that juveniles have “diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform” in parole decision-making. The attorney general should stop defending the board’s practice of holding juvenile offenders to an adult standard in release hearings and the governor should instruct the Board of Parole to draft regulations requiring them to take the offender’s age into account in assessing whether the individual meets the release criteria.
Issa Kohler-Hausmann Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School and Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale

https://www.themarshallproject.org/letters/706-issa-kohler-hausmann-letter-governor-cuomo-could-do-something-right-now #.cHtDFq7en

Submitted on 06.22.2015 at 4:03 p.m.

08/18/2015

wow...

Samuel Harrell, an inmate at the Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, N.Y., died in April after a fight with officers, records show. Other prisoners say the beating was not an isolated incident.

06/02/2015

awesome!!

See Wilson in action with Seal… Experience a very special bond between man and dog. This is Wilson falling back in love with Seal, the dog that single-handedly changed his life. While incarcerated, and while battling levels of depression, Wilson found himself searching for a clear direction in lif…

03/05/2015

http://youtu.be/utAN9207g-o