Dangerous to Feel This Desperate: How to Ease Prison Chaos in NY

My neighbor, Jean Frantz, 52, has been in jail since he was 20 years outdated. A number of of his teenage years had been spent locked up, too. He sports activities a baldie with a razor scar that stretches from the highest of his head to the again of his neck, a reminder of darker occasions earlier in his bid; he’s now served 32 years of the 47-and-a-half-years-to-life sentence he obtained after a theft went sideways in Queens.

It was 1994, across the time Sen. Joe Biden penned the infamous crime invoice that President Invoice Clinton would signal. Hillary Clinton hadn’t but made her well-known comment about “superpredators,” however Frantz now is aware of she was speaking about him and his mates. They had been Black youngsters, crooks from the crack period, robbing individuals at gunpoint, just like the Pakistani cab driver they carjacked and killed, although Frantz was not the shooter. “It took a few years to acknowledge all of the destructive spillover from my actions,” Frantz wrote within the private assertion of his latest clemency software to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. “I suppose because of this I need mercy — so I can earn redemption by mending all of the hurt I precipitated.”

I’m serving time with Jean Frantz up the river at Sing Sing. He is without doubt one of the 1000’s of New York prisoners who’ve utilized for clemency within the type of a commutation from the governor. Clemency has two capabilities: Pardons are supposed to erase the results of convictions and are often granted to individuals who have been residing crime-free for many years; commutations scale back sentences, both by making the recipient eligible for parole or liberating them outright, whereas the convictions stay on their data. Presidents have energy over federal circumstances, governors over state convictions. Commutations are what matter to individuals in jail.

A sentence commutation is the one manner somebody like Frantz will see a parole board earlier than 2042. Not like some states that require somebody to serve one-third or half of their sentence earlier than changing into eligible for parole, we serve the complete minimal time period of our sentences in New York. For Frantz, meaning 47-and-a-half years. As a result of individuals convicted of violent offenses in New York prisons aren’t in a position to earn time without work our sentences for good conduct, and since our lawmakers are unwilling to move laws that might change that, our solely hope for a second likelihood is for Gov. Hochul to commute our sentences.

As we approached the tip of 2025 — a 12 months when President Donald Trump went commutation loopy — Hochul hadn’t issued a single one.

It’s exhausting to not evaluate Hochul’s inaction to Trump’s fearless use — or abuse — of the ability. I’ve watched the information on the TV in my cell because the president granted pardons and commutations to those that’d served solely weeks or months on years-long sentences — nowhere close to sufficient time to course of accountability or really feel regret. And it’s not like he’s solely freed individuals like George Santos or that Christian actuality present couple, clowns with simply sufficient clout to make the ask. He’s let some heavy hitters go, too: Ross Ulbricht, the founding father of Silk Street, a darkish net market for drug trafficking, who was accused of making an attempt to make use of his personal platform to contract murders-for-hire (though they weren’t carried out).

That’s to not say there isn’t a distinction between these circumstances and ours. The particular person I killed can by no means come again. The crime of homicide is extra tangible than monetary crimes or fraud. My sufferer’s family members are affected perpetually. When deciding whether or not to grant clemency, Hochul should weigh the seriousness of the crime in opposition to the lengthy stretches of time we’ve served, in addition to our “distinctive strides in self-development,” which the appliance asks us to element. This isn’t precisely what Trump is contemplating earlier than commuting his individuals.

After Christmas got here and went with out an announcement from the governor, Frantz stopped in entrance of my bars and requested if there was any phrase. He confirmed me a letter he had lately obtained from the governor’s workplace, assuring him that his clemency software was nonetheless beneath evaluation. After I pulled out the one which was additionally mailed to me, and confirmed him the language in each letters was the identical, word-for-word, his face dropped.

I stated it didn’t seem like she was going to do any commutations this 12 months, and if she did, they most likely wouldn’t be for violent circumstances like ours.

“Rattling,” Frantz stated, “you make it sound like I shouldn’t even have hope.”

I felt dangerous that I sounded so cynical.

In 2001, I shot and killed a person in Brooklyn. I quickly obtained 25 years to life, plus three extra years on high for promoting medication. I belonged in jail. I had a ninth-grade training; I didn’t know what would grow to be of me, if I used to be even able to a comeback. And because the choose may solely assess the worst model of me again then, I don’t blame her for giving me the max. I must serve the complete 28 years earlier than seeing the parole board in 2029. Within the early aughts, clemency was not a sensible path for somebody with a criminal offense like mine. I hoped issues would change, they usually did.

In 2018, CUNY Regulation Faculty Professor Steve Zeidman got here to Sing Sing to offer a discuss clemency. He was a trim 60-something with salt-and-pepper hair. “Everybody was saying to me, ‘Oh, clemency, it doesn’t occur,’” Zeidman informed the attentive crowd of prisoners, many condemned to de facto life sentences. “And my response was all the time, ‘Nicely, possibly it doesn’t occur as a result of not sufficient individuals are banging the drum.’”

Zeidman, with all his power and optimism, sounded just like the founding father of a tech start-up. Earlier than 2015, clemency was extraordinary in New York. Zeidman got down to change that. In 2016, he satisfied then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to commute the 75-to-life sentence of Judith Clark, the getaway driver within the 1981 Brink’s heist that left a guard and two cops lifeless. Quickly after, Zeidman began the Second Look Venture at CUNY, and since then, he and his colleagues have represented tons of of individuals incarcerated in New York. By the point Cuomo stepped down in 2021, he had granted 41 commutations, a number of for homicides, 14 of which had been filed with the assistance of Zeidman’s clinic.

Seeing the chance {that a} new administration may create for clemency, I wrote an opinion piece in The New York Occasions arguing that, because the governor, Kathy Hochul ought to appoint an advisory panel to assist her choose probably the most certified candidates for commutations. Hochul wound up doing that.

Just a few months later, in a December 2021 press launch, her workplace detailed “a number of steps to reform the Govt clemency program” and stated Hochul dedicated to “dedicating extra employees assets to reviewing purposes so as to have the ability to grant clemency on an ongoing foundation all year long, somewhat than granting clemency solely as soon as.”

By the point I submitted my clemency software in the summertime of 2023, Hochul had commuted seven sentences. She wasn’t making bulletins on an ongoing foundation, however she was doing one thing.

After a contentious assembly with my authorized group, the household of the person I murdered created a web based petition opposing my launch. (His sister had beforehand requested that I not use his title in my writing, so I don’t.) It’s because of this that I’ve come to just accept that I can’t obtain clemency, and if no invoice is handed that acknowledges rehabilitation, I gained’t see the parole board till 2029.

Hochul commuted one other three individuals’s sentences in September 2023, however it wasn’t lengthy earlier than she began to expertise the political danger of displaying mercy. Some had pointed to her supposed soft-on-crime insurance policies for her waning recognition and for Democratic losses in New York. By the summer season of 2024, after she commuted two extra individuals’s sentences, her approval ranking hit a brand new low.

Perhaps that’s why Hochul commuted just one sentence in December of 2024. However by that point, a monumental sequence of occasions would shift the dialog away from mercy and towards justice for one among us.

Days after her announcement, the legal professional basic’s workplace launched bodycam footage displaying a number of correction officers beating a restrained prisoner named Robert Brooks to dying. In February 2025, three days earlier than a particular prosecutor was scheduled to unseal prices in opposition to the COs concerned within the killing, jail officers throughout the state walked off the job in an unlawful strike. By the point 10 officers had been indicted — the fees included homicide, manslaughter and proof tampering — their colleagues had deserted their posts at 41 of the state’s 42 prisons, which rapidly tumbled into chaos.

For practically a month throughout the strike, we had been locked in our cells: no visits, no packages. Hochul deployed the Nationwide Guard to cowl for the putting officers. When 2,000 of the officers refused to return to work after the state negotiated instantly with the strikers, Hochul fired them. By the point the strike formally ended, 9 prisoners had been lifeless, together with Messiah Nantwi, one other man overwhelmed to dying by officers whereas restrained. The Nationwide Guard continues to be right here at Sing Sing, and at prisons throughout the state, patrolling the tiers of their fatigues. To this point, the state has reportedly spent $1 billion to maintain the troops posted inside.

Officers claimed they had been putting as a result of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act, handed by state lawmakers in 2021, endangered them. The regulation put limits on the period of time we could possibly be positioned in solitary confinement as a disciplinary measure. I’m no fan of the field — I spent six months there early in my bid — however lawmakers did overlook the destructive unintended effects of the regulation, which have made jail much less protected.

The previous few years have been the worst — probably the most violent — I’ve ever seen in a technology behind bars. Since HALT’s implementation in 2022, the numbers of each assaults on guards and prisoner-on-prisoner assaults have exploded. In accordance with the Correctional Affiliation of New York, an impartial oversight physique, the variety of assaults on guards grew by greater than 76% in three years. We received extra violent with each other, too. In 2024, there have been 2,970 prisoner-on-prisoner assaults, an increase of 168% from the 12 months earlier than the regulation went into impact.

It’s been chaos. And as egregious because the conduct of some officers has been, I don’t blame them fully, similar to I don’t wholly blame my friends. Largely, I blame New York lawmakers, and the governor, for his or her ineptitude and indifference, and their failure to supply hope to individuals residing and dealing within the state’s prisons. They need to have handed a invoice, in tandem with HALT, that might have allowed these of us doing the best factor, for instance, a possibility to earn time without work our sentences. However they didn’t. Now, nobody will get punished for dangerous conduct or rewarded for good conduct, both.

As final 12 months wore on, Hochul’s zero commutations had been being far surpassed by her friends in different states with comparable — and even greater — charges of incarceration and much more secure prisons. Throughout the river, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy made a number of clemency bulletins, commuting 40 sentences, many for homicide. Perhaps Murphy was extra beneficiant along with his mercy as a result of he was not operating for reelection, however on the opposite aspect of the nation, Gov. Gavin Newsom made comparable bulletins. Newsom will seemingly run within the subsequent presidential election, and but he granted 34 commutations, a number of of which had been additionally for individuals convicted of homicides. That is the way you inject pictures of hope into a jail inhabitants.

Throughout and after the strike, reform advocates known as on Hochul to make use of her clemency energy to lower the jail inhabitants, consolidate us all into fewer prisons, and make higher use of her guards. However it’s exhausting to think about Hochul liberating a bunch of us with the stroke of a pen. Lawmakers allow us to down, too. Regardless of a statehouse stuffed with Democrats and a jail system in disaster, not one of the payments geared toward lowering the inhabitants had been even put to a vote earlier than the final session resulted in June. These included laws just like the Earned Time Act, which might’ve allowed guys like Frantz and me the flexibility to earn time without work our sentences for good conduct and participation in packages. The Second Look Act would’ve allow us to, after serving a big period of time, petition a choose for a second likelihood within the type of a sentence discount. If one or each of those payments had been handed with HALT, I doubt we’d have had the uptick in violence, the killings, or the strike.

Like one of many failed payments in New York, “re-assessment” laws is definitely modeled off a measure within the First Step Act, a bipartisan invoice that Trump signed into regulation in 2018. It permits any federal prisoner to ask their trial choose, often after lengthy stretches of time, for compassionate launch. To this point, federal judges have launched practically 6,000 individuals beneath the measure.

U.S. District Choose Frederic Block, of the Jap District of New York, informed me it’s ridiculous that New York doesn’t give its judges the identical energy. The choose and I grew to become acquainted after I reviewed his ebook, “A Second Probability,” and he responded with a letter to the editor, writing that if I had been locked up within the feds, he’d free me.

What’s extra irritating for us is that probably the most harmful organized crime figures wind up within the feds, whereas these of us in state jail had been typically their flunkies, taking their orders, low within the legal pecking order. This gnaws at my friends and me. Many people aren’t as culpable as our counterparts within the feds. That they’ll get second probabilities and we will’t feels arbitrary and is difficult to reconcile.

Choose Block has freed some actual brand-name reformed criminals beneath the First Step Act, like Anthony Russo, a captain within the Colombo crime household, who ordered the executions of two mafia rivals within the early ’90s, across the similar time Jean Frantz went away. Throughout one telephone dialog, Block informed me he was about to launch one other: Walter Johnson. I later realized he was speaking about “Tut,” a infamous stick-up child from Brooklyn whom I’d been listening to about for years. Block had sentenced Tut to 5 life phrases within the ’90s. Now he’s free. Block and Tut have even gone on to do interviews collectively in regards to the significance of second probabilities. (Final week, in a call granting the termination of Tut’s supervised launch, Block known as out New York legislators for failing to move the Second Look Act.)

Between the releases beneath his First Step Act and the extra direct ones along with his clemency energy, Trump, who positioned himself because the law-and-order candidate, has proven much more mercy (warranted or not) to individuals within the feds than New York’s progressive leaders have proven to individuals of their prisons.

The reverse of hope is desperation, and it’s harmful for this inhabitants to really feel determined — particularly when the state of affairs inside is so unstable. The factor about second probabilities is that there is a constructive spillover. Hope turns into a software to quell rigidity. A youthful man who has the identical half-century sentence as Frantz might even see him get commuted or resentenced and understand that there’s an opportunity he may get an early launch, too. He’ll cease gang-banging and join faculty. Perhaps he gained’t reply impulsively to the subsequent one that challenges him, which suggests one much less melee for guards to interrupt up.

That’s the opposite factor about second probabilities: Hope makes the job safer for officers, too. I’ve by no means been the form of author who makes my friends into victims or jail guards into villains, as a result of most of us are simply making an attempt to do our time, and most of them are simply making an attempt to do their jobs. Our lives are inextricably intertwined — and any dialogue that pits us in opposition to them is lacking the purpose. COs and prisoners each have decrease life expectations and better charges of PTSD, suicide and despair than different individuals in society. An inhumane residing atmosphere for us can be an inhumane work atmosphere for COs.

Jail is extra painful for these of us who’ve turned our lives round. We’re able to go, however unable to go away. It’s like that for lots of males I do know, like Frantz and plenty of of Zeidman’s shoppers, who’ve robbed and killed and now have receding hairlines, grey goatees and faculty levels. We’re wiser and extra contemplative, nothing like we had been once we got here in. Lately, I can’t stand the piercing noise and the identical outdated, boring conversations. In my decrease moments, I’ve generally puzzled, “Why did I work so exhausting to raised myself if it solely made the time more durable?”

On Dec. 30, when Jean Frantz returned from the library, I informed him Hochul had lastly made her clemency announcement for the 12 months. She made two commutations, sending two males, who dedicated robberies to feed their addictions, earlier than a parole panel. Frantz wasn’t one among them.

“She ain’t serving to us out, bro,” I stated. “It’s an election 12 months.”

Zeidman stated he was exasperated by Hochul’s announcement. A number of the clemency purposes from his clinic have been pending for nearly a decade. In complete, since changing into governor, Hochul has pardoned 101 individuals and granted 19 commutations. It doesn’t look like commuting sentences frequently is a promise she thinks is price maintaining.

When Hochul gave her State of the State deal with in January, she didn’t say one phrase in regards to the disaster in corrections. What’s not stated is usually a extra highly effective message than what’s. In my thoughts, it’s that we — individuals who stay in jail, individuals who work in jail — don’t a lot matter to her. What occurs right here doesn’t, both.

In response to the homicide of Robert Brooks, Hochul pledged to spend tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} on cameras in prisons and physique cams for COs. She additionally added $2 million to the 2025 state funds for the Correctional Affiliation of New York, the one oversight physique tasked with monitoring New York prisons. Legislators negotiated that determine to $3 million. However this 12 months, Hochul’s proposed funding for the Correctional Affiliation: zero.

Hochul’s spokesperson, Jess D’Amelia stated that the governor evaluations clemency purposes on a rolling foundation. Since taking workplace, along with creating an advisory panel, she has up to date the state’s clemency web site and software types. The Govt Clemency Bureau additionally sends letters to replace candidates about their case’s standing.

“The security of all New Yorkers — together with the employees and incarcerated people in our prisons — is a high precedence for Gov. Hochul,” D’Amelia stated in an emailed assertion, including, “This administration stays dedicated to a good and thorough clemency course of, and dealing to scale back recidivism and improve reentry companies for beforehand incarcerated people.”

In an earlier draft of this piece, I had closed with a name to motion: As Hochul prepares to ask voters for a second likelihood, maybe she may give second probabilities to those that have requested the identical of her. However why child myself? Hochul has seemingly made a strategic choice to restrict commuting sentences as she runs for reelection this 12 months, to keep away from assaults from her Republican opponent, Bruce Blakeman, accusing her of coddling criminals. Why would Hochul danger her profession to offer us second probabilities when the supermajority Democratic celebration in Albany refuses, 12 months after 12 months, to move any payments that might try this?

Just a few weeks in the past, I helped Frantz carry some baggage of his property over to the honour block. It is a safer atmosphere with extra privileges, even a yard with a backyard. The retirement residence of the large home. Frantz damage his knee enjoying ball a couple of years in the past, and in the present day he walks with a cane. He feels weak. Having are available in as a child, and now having his physique break down at 52, it messes along with his head. He was joyful to get a bit extra freedom. As for our prospects for precise freedom, our conversations had shifted from clemency to the Second Look Act.

“Our quantity will play quickly,” I informed him. “The invoice has loads of momentum.”

“I’ve been listening to that for years,” Frantz stated.

“Now you sound just like the cynic,” I believed.

Trump seldom touts his First Step Act, however regardless of all of the high-profile former gangsters who had been launched beneath the regulation, I haven’t heard of 1 politician getting flack for passing it seven years in the past.

Because the 2026 legislative session will get underway in Albany, Zeidman is cautiously optimistic in regards to the Second Look Act. Whereas he says clemency would stay an necessary a part of the work, the regulation would create new alternatives for post-conviction reduction, which is particularly necessary given Hochul’s inaction.

Prior to now few years, after Hochul’s December bulletins, Zeidman obtained a flurry of emails and telephone calls from prisoners and their relations. “All I hear is heartbreak and frustration from individuals asking, ‘What extra can he do inside?’ You recognize what I say to them? ‘There’s nothing.’”

It’s New York lawmakers who must do one thing.