“Not truly free”: Parole is not the happy ending people think it is

Abd’Allah Lateef is living a double life. He is a respected activist and community member, yet the Pennsylvania resident cannot cross state lines. He is subject to random drug tests despite never having a drug problem and is not allowed to associate with people with a criminal record or go to an establishment that sells alcohol. He lives in the shadow of a mistake he made at age 17 because, like roughly 850,000 other Americans, he is on parole. Currently, one in 69 adults in the United States are under community supervision, in the form of either probation or parole.

When Lateef was 17 years old, he was involved in an unarmed robbery that resulted in the death of the victim a few weeks later. He regrets that horrific crime, but at age 54, he is no longer dangerous.

He lives in a constant state of hypervigilance.

“It's like the idea of being free, but also realizing that in any moment, through no fault of your own, your freedom can be revoked,” Lateef said.

Lateef has been out of prison since 2017 after being initially sentenced to life without the possibility of parole as a juvenile. A series of Supreme Court cases found such a sentence for a juvenile unconstitutional, which allowed Lateef to be released on parole after spending 31 years in prison. He knows that he deserved to go to prison, but as grateful as he is to get out, it is maddening to him that the state has not recognized the successful, rehabilitated and lawful person he has become. He believes that lifetime parole is unfair. Research shows that those who commit crimes as a juvenile usually “grow out of antisocial activity as they transition to adulthood,” as a U.S. Department of Justice report puts it.

“It eats at the very root of self-efficacy, dignity, and even personal identity,” Lateef said, “that no matter what you do, you can’t escape from your past.”

As the legal system attempts to move away from the era of mass incarceration, parole is seen as an alternative. And, for many, it is. It provides incentives to stay clean, stay out of trouble and get a job. For chronic violent offenders, GPS monitoring and supervision can help ensure public safety. But the numerous conditions people must contend with can make re-entry more difficult. Activists work to to improve conditions in prison, ensure there are no wrongful convictions and help people stay out of jail in the first place. The same scrutiny and evaluation should be applied to parole.

The process of losing one's parole or probation sentence and becoming incarcerated is called revocation, and high numbers of revocation demonstrate the flaws of the parole system. Nearly 25% of the U.S. prison population is behind bars because of a parole or probation violation. Overly stringent conditions essentially set people up for failure, and the level at which rules are enforced is dependent on the parole officer. Re-entering society is difficult enough. Imagine leaving society as a teenager and trying to re-enter it 40 years later with no money, job or social circle. Employment is a condition of parole, yet it is extremely difficult for someone on parole. Sending them back to jail perpetuates the cycle of incarceration and parole, over and over again.

Researchers and advocates are trying to address the issue, though more are focused on prison itself. One of those researchers is attorney Katy Naples-Mitchell, who alongside colleagues at Harvard university, is analyzing racial disparities in the Massachusetts criminal system.

“Probation and parole end up being feeders back into the system of mass criminalization and mass incarceration,” said Naples-Mitchell.

As with any aspect of the criminal legal system, racism and racial disparities come into play. Naples-Mitchell says that there is evidence of disparity “at every decision point,” from the reaction of the police officer upon the first interaction to the parole board's decision.

“There is this kind of culture of darkness over what's really happening,” Naples-Mitchell said.

At the same time, it is critical to recognize that, legally and procedurally, parole is seen as a privilege — that is, it’s a privilege to leave prison and serve the remaining time in the community. Parole should be an option for more people, and while that is important to advocate for, bettering the experience of people on parole is important as well.

Conditions for people on parole vary state by state. Some common conditions include finding housing; finding employment; following laws; not leaving the state; letting their parole officer know when they are changing housing or their job; paying child support, restitution or supervision fees; and not associating with people with criminal records. People are subject to random drug tests, searches and a variety of other conditions.

On the surface, it makes sense that people on parole cannot associate with other people on parole. The goal is to keep people out of trouble. But they have lived with people who have committed crimes and have spent decades behind bars, and in neighborhoods that are heavily policed and burdened by entanglement with the legal system, a lot of people are on parole. Naples-Mitchell said this disproportionately affects people of color because they are more likely to have been involved in the criminal legal system.

It is difficult for somebody with a record to find a job, as many companies do not want to take a risk on a criminal. People who are registered sex offenders are typically not allowed to use the internet, which severely limits their options. A company that does hire felons is rare, and to say that someone on parole cannot associate with other people on parole is restricting the few job options they have. Additionally, parolees cannot work as truck drivers because that requires crossing state lines.

Rather than punishing someone for not having a job, parole officers should instead assist parolees in searching.

One man, identified in a research study as “David O,” described parole as “feel[ing] like you are standing on the edge of a cliff.”

“You never know if you will get violated for an infraction you didn’t know you committed,” he said in a recorded interview with Simon Singer, a criminologist, professor and researcher based at Northeastern University. Singer is conducting research on David O and the experiences of others sentenced to life when they were juveniles.

David O murdered an 8-year-old boy when he was 16 and convicted of sodomy and first-degree murder. David denies the sodomy charges, and medical examiners found no evidence of sexual assault. David O is still a registered sex offender, and one condition of his parole is that he cannot use or have access to the internet. Though it is an understandable condition considering sex offenders may spread or view child pornography videos or take part in the online grooming of minors, it was a huge obstacle for employment. Despite having many skills, he was unable to find a job for a long time. Eventually, he found a job working the night shift in a bread warehouse yet had to request special permission to work there, because other people with felonies worked there as well and contact with them would be considered a violation of his parole.

Public health researcher Katherine LeMasters based at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus agrees that people on parole and probation are often left out of the broader conversation regarding criminal justice reform. She and other researchers investigated the mental health of people under supervision and found that for many, overly stringent parole conditions leads to depression, anxiety or PTSD. The anxiety of the numerous rules they have to contend with weighed on many as they constantly feared revocation. One anonymous participant said that probation “ain’t nothing but a rope to hang yourself with.”

“People were kind of surviving through childhood trauma, or childhood hardships broadly, that hadn't ever really been addressed,” LeMasters said. “The culmination of all these things was just so overwhelming.”

Mental health issues not only affect a person's lived experience but also others. If someone on parole is a parent, their children also experience supervision and the legal system, which is another way of perpetuating the cycle of generational involvement with the legal system. If someone has severe untreated depression, they will have a hard time parenting their children, working and keeping a job or staying clean.

LeMasters spoke about how some people she spoke to understand that drinking or using drugs isn’t helpful, but it is the only way they know how to self-medicate. They lack the resources to take care of their mental health, as, for many, it is not a priority on top of their many other responsibilities. Mounting and constant anxiety are harmful to physical health as well and can contribute to exhaustion that can lead to mistakes that send them to prison

Through her interviews, LeMasters found that the most successful parolees got support and resources from their parole officers in the form of assistance securing a job, housing or medical care. Parole officers, by definition, help their clients but are largely responsible for ensuring they are not breaking the rules. A social worker could provide all the care and services without the punitive aspects. While a social worker may not provide the discipline and structure some people need to succeed, it can lessen the humiliation, indignity and coercion others find antithetical to their freedom.

“The things people found helpful about probation and parole were all things that could have been provided from community providers,” LeMasters said. “They didn't require the criminal legal system to be doing it.”

Jason Hardy agrees that more resources are necessary.

Jason Hardy decided to become a parole officer after a string of dead-end jobs left him wanting more. He admits he was “naive” going into it, and believed that caring and a “can do” attitude could change people’s lives. He got dealt 220 cases and had to figure it out along the way. He worked in the city of New Orleans as a PO from 2012 to 2016 then published a book, “The Second Chance Club,” about his experiences. The primary issue in supervision, he said, is human behavior.

“It's just like this complicated business of trying to make people modify their behavior,” Hardy said.

The “absolute minimum” parole officers should be able to do, he said, is connect people with drug and mental health resources. For many of his clients, those issues were the drivers of their crimes, revocation and problems. Next, he would have liked to be able to help people secure housing, at least temporarily. By the end of his run, the POs were able to get unhoused people temporary shelter, which he saw as an improvement, even if it is a “basic social need.”

The solution to the broader issues of parole is not to simply to inject more well-intentioned people into an inherently flawed system.

Hardy learned that the difficult way. He realized there were some people he just couldn’t save.

“Just because somebody I supervise thinks I'm a nice guy, it doesn't mean that, like, they're going to suddenly overcome the mental health problem,” Hardy said.

When a client came to him begging to go to rehab and the five beds in the public rehab program nearby were full, his best option was to lock them up and allow the client to detox in the medical ward inside. Hardy doesn’t believe that people struggling with addiction should be incarcerated, but the welfare, rehab, healthcare and support systems of society failed them and failed him, depriving him of a choice.

In the four years he worked as a PO, he saw progress. He saw a widening net of social support and a less punitive approach towards sentencing. The caseloads of his former colleagues have gone down, partly due to hiring more and partly because of a statewide approach to keep people out of the criminal legal system to begin with. He hopes that people continue to evaluate and reform the parole system.

Lateef advocates for less extreme sentences for children, who like himself, made some mistakes at a young age.

One of his friends is on parole (he is breaking the rule of non-association) and Lateef has seen him deteriorate in front of his very own eyes. He served 43 years in prison and the experience of being on parole “is killing him.” Lateef says that the anxiety parole is creating in his life is having a physical health impact and parole is “eating away at him.” Lateef said he wasn’t as sick, hypervigilant and stressed as he was when he first got out of prison.

“It’s not just the daily routines policies, practices and procedures. It’s knowing what can happen, even if you are doing the right things,” Lateef said. “Who can live like that?”

In a way, Lateef has left prison, but prison has not left him. He and so many others experience severe mental and physical health ramifications of incarcerations, which is yet another example of support systems failing.

“You still feel like a number,” Lateef said. “You still feel like, although you're not in uniform, you're still a prisoner.”