Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act recipients enjoy spending time together in a local DC park in June 2021. (Photo courtesy of Anthony Petty)

Anthony Petty and Shannon Fyfe: Mayor Bowser, it’s time to take control over parole

By Commentary On Nov 14, 2022 Last updated Nov 14, 2022

If you are a DC resident going up for parole — or if you’ve violated parole — your fate is decided by the U.S. Parole Commission. This body is currently staffed by only two commissioners: one from Maryland, and the other from Kentucky. The DC government recognizes this situation as a problem, and folks have been advocating for years for DC to take back control over parole decisions affecting its residents.

Anthony Petty is a core team member of Neighbors for Justice and a credible messenger at the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services.

But Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration keeps putting off the transition, claiming in March that, in order not to be “rushed,” they needed another year before they could take back local control over parole. Last month, the mayor told Congress it would be at least two more years before DC would be prepared. The administration’s concern with taking back control over parole in a sustainable way is laudable. But officials in the executive branch do not seem to understand that this situation is about more than statehood or the optics of having officials from Kentucky and Maryland determine parole fates.

Ward 6 DC Council member Charles Allen, who chairs the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, struck the right tone in July when he called for urgency. As he said at the time: “We’re talking about people’s lives.”

Yes, Mayor Bowser, we are talking about DC residents’ literal lives, and you need to prioritize them by taking steps to retake parole authority now.

Local control over parole is one of many steps that should be taken to reduce the population of District residents at the DC jail and in federal facilities. DC has already enacted the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act of 2016 (IRAA) and the Second Look Amendment Act (incorporated within the Omnibus Public Safety and Justice Amendment Act of 2020). The DC Council also recently voted to enact significant reforms to the District’s criminal code, including reducing maximum penalties for certain offenses, eliminating almost all mandatory minimum sentences, and allowing for jury trials in almost all misdemeanor cases. While the bill still needs one more vote before heading to Mayor Bowser for her signature, the reforms are the result of years of work by the Criminal Code Reform Commission and are supported by many in the community.

One of us, Anthony Petty, is an IRAA recipient, and as a result he was able to avoid going before the U.S. Parole Commission before being released. But many other DC residents are not so lucky, as they do not fall under the provisions of the legislative attempts at decarceration. And it’s becoming even harder for them to see a light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to parole.

In July, two DC residents were killed in separate incidents at a federal penitentiary due to the pervasive culture of violence in prison. Both are examples of geography meeting pride and masculinity: other DC residents in the federal penitentiaries say one was killed over access to a phone, and the other was killed because he was from DC.

The environment in federal facilities where DC residents serve felony sentences is incredibly violent, and individuals from the District are especially vulnerable. More than 95% of incarcerated people from DC are Black, and they are being sent to facilities with a history of racism and discrimination against men from DC. The administrators, staff and other residents at these facilities see everything the DC residents do as a challenge to them, and they don’t see DC residents as men who are on their way home or who are trying to protect the community they have built inside prison.

Here’s the reality of the situation: The most straightforward way for these men to survive, in facilities far from home, is to maintain loyalty to other DC residents. The violence in prison requires individuals to defend themselves, and the culture in prison requires individuals from DC to defend one another if they are to survive.

There are several reasons the current parole system in DC makes this culture even more problematic. First, the current members of the U.S. Parole Commission are not familiar with the particular challenges faced by DC residents in federal facilities. When they take up a parole request for someone who has a hit on their record for violence, they may not understand the inherent violence in a particular facility or the need to act in defense of oneself or someone else. They are unlikely to understand that the applicant may have had little or no choice, given their circumstances. The U.S. Parole Commission members sometimes deny parole to applicants for failing to participate in certain kinds of programming, despite the notorious lack of such programming in the federal penitentiaries where most DC residents serve their sentences.

Furthermore, the U.S. Parole Commission is making it worse for these DC residents by denying them a reason to try to avoid violence. The current members of the U.S. Parole Commission — neither of whom was elected by DC voters — consistently take a more conservative approach to criminal justice than the DC Council, which has passed reforms with the support of much of the community. When DC residents are regularly denied parole, they have little incentive to put forth the effort to try to avoid violent encounters. It’s safer to maintain loyalty.

We need to work toward allowing more DC residents to serve felony sentences closer to home, where their DC residency doesn’t escalate the risk of violence against them. But DC must also take back control over the parole system as soon as possible to save lives now.

Anthony Petty is a core team member of Neighbors for Justice, a local organization founded in 2020 to support individuals who are incarcerated at the DC jail, and a credible messenger at the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. Shannon Fyfe is a faculty fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University and a founding member of Neighbors for Justice.

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