Kathy Hochul’s Parole Board Blunders

Hochul, who nominates all parole commissioners, had given Stradford his spot on the board. It’s a high-stakes job: Two- or three-member board panels determine the fates of thousands of incarcerated people every year. They decide cases at a rapid pace, historically spending mere minutes on each one.

And there aren’t enough commissioners. For at least a decade, the board has been several down from its full capacity of 19, according to available state reports. As a result, each commissioner hears, conservatively, nearly 1,000 release cases annually — on top of hundreds of other types of administrative meetings — according to the limited available data. Parole commissioners in most other states have far smaller caseloads.

As part of her first State of the State policy agenda in 2022, Hochul promised to fully staff the board. Her efforts have resulted in one mishap after another.

Three of Hochul’s seven known parole board nominations have crashed and burned. One of her picks didn’t make it through the confirmation process after state senators, who vote to confirm or reject the governor’s nominees, grilled him over his role in violent protest crackdowns during his time as a top police official. After that, Hochul tapped Stradford — a local bureaucrat and failed politician — at the legislative schedule’s last minute, giving senators mere hours to vet him. Later, around the time of Stradford’s ouster, Hochul nominated another candidate — only to have senators dismiss him because they surmised that she had nominated him as a political favor.

In the aftermath of the nomination chaos, most of which has not been previously reported, the Board of Parole remains understaffed. What’s more, 11 of the parole board’s 16 current members are serving on expired terms — so-called zombie commissioners — including three whose terms expired over five years ago. Hochul hasn’t sought to renominate or replace them.

The staffing dysfunction at least partially stems from the governor’s ideological differences with progressive legislators and criminal justice reform advocates. New York’s parole commissioners have wide discretion over whether to release someone from prison: There’s almost no publicly available data on how individual commissioners wield their power, but limited numbers obtained by New York Focus in 2022 suggest that release rates can vary widely depending on the attitudes of individual board members. While Hochul has, with some exceptions, sought to appoint criminal justice institutionalists to the board, the reformers have for years pushed for policies and commissioners that will overhaul New York’s parole system and release more people from prison in a timely manner.

“Parole commissioners hold an incredibly important position,” said TeAna Taylor, an organizer and policy director for the nonprofit Release Aging People in Prison. “And it deserves to be filled by someone with the experience and values to really be able to fairly consider someone for their readiness for release.”

Stradford stumbled through long-winded, at times difficult-to-comprehend opening remarks — doing so “without a script,” he noted. He argued that he was a regular person with whom incarcerated people could identify. He had never worked as an officer of the criminal-legal system, he said. He was a Metropolitan Transit Authority Police chaplain and a longtime administrative staff analyst for various New York City agencies. Stradford referred to himself as a “career human resources expert,” which he insisted taught him how to ensure that people get the opportunities they deserve.

He failed to mention that he also had an unsuccessful side career as a politician. He ran for state Senate in 2018, coming in last place in the Democratic primary with 12 percent of the vote. Three years later, he came in fourth place of five in the Democratic primary for Staten Island borough president. (His borough president campaign’s Facebook page posted a graphic that read, “Vote Brandon Stradford for City Council.”) During his parole board confirmation hearing, Stradford claimed he had been preparing for a seat on the parole board for about two and a half years — roughly since his defeat in the borough president race.

“Anyone can say that they might know me, or know a person like me,” Stradford mused during his opening remarks. “And to where that benefits me is because it allowed me to see that, just because a person may have made some mistakes, do they want to stay in that same area where they made those mistakes? What if I had a word or two, or was able to offer an opportunity that would allow that person to come out of where they were and be the best person they can be?”

After 10 minutes, Krueger told Stradford to stop. “We’re doing double duty of debating on the floor as we’re with you,” she reminded him, before allowing senators to ask him questions.

After less than half an hour of inquiries, mostly into Stradford’s background, the committee members voted to move him forward. Only two dissented — both Republicans, including Patrick Gallivan, a former parole board member himself. Senate corrections committee chair Julia Salazar called his testimony “refreshing,” while fellow criminal justice reformer Jamaal Bailey referred to Stradford as an “ideal” candidate. The full Senate went on to confirm him later that evening.

Ernest Hart was a police accountability proponent when the New York City Police Department hired him as its top legal adviser in 2019. He had previously been an assistant district attorney, a criminal court judge, and head of the city agency that investigates complaints against the police.

A little over a year into Hart’s NYPD tenure, the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd sparked one of the largest protest movements in United States history. The NYPD responded with aggressive tactics that became the subject of international human rights organization inquiries and led to a $13 million legal settlement. One of the NYPD’s most violent suppressions took place at a nonviolent June 2020 protest march in the Bronx, where this reporter was present. Police arrested 236 people and left 61 with injuries, including broken noses, fingers, and teeth, according to Human Rights Watch.

In a letter to Human Rights Watch, Hart justified the police response. He falsely claimed that the coalition that organized the protest invited “local gangs” to attend and engage in violence and that organizers encouraged “killing and injuring police officers.” He also justified the arrest of legal observers by asserting that they were not considered “essential workers” under the city’s curfew policies.

During his parole board confirmation hearing last year, which lasted about 25 minutes, senators repeatedly asked Hart about his time with the NYPD and his letter to Human Rights Watch. “There were things with the police department that I didn’t like,” he said. Hart said NYPD brass had “heated discussions” about the protests. “There was a lot of pushback” in internal department discussions, “and I never held back my opinion.” Hart did not respond to requests for comment.

After his testimony, senators discussed the possibility of voting against Hochul’s full slate of parole board nominees. When the slate made its way to the floor for a full Senate vote, Hart’s name wasn’t among the nominees. Hochul’s office did not respond to questions about whether she pulled his candidacy.