On May 9, Tina Maschi, PhD, associate professor at the Graduate School of Social Service, released a comprehensive report that explores ethical, financial, and legal arguments for the compassionate release of incarcerated elders. Published by Be The Evidence, a non-profit social justice collective, the report titled “Analysis of United States Compassionate and Geriatric Release Laws” takes a close look at how various systems across the nation treat incarcerated elders or those with serious terminal illnesses.

Maschi said there has never been a comparison that analyzed state-by-state laws and regulations for compassionate release.

“We’re making a lot of decisions on policy that all to often are not based on evidence,” she said.

In the report, which looks at all 50 states, only Oregon emerges as one that considers the incarceration of sick older prisoners as cruel and inhumane. Some 47 out of 52 federal or state systems allow for the petition of compassionate release, but only 36 percent offer a clearly defined process.

Maschi said while many incarceration experts support early release from a humanitarian perspective, efforts to change laws are often stymied by fear- mongering.

“We fear crime, we fear violence, getting old and dying” she said. “But fear should not blind us to the realities of too many people are old, sick, and dying in prison.”

In general, released seniors have a zero to 1 percent recidivism rate, said Maschi. And most laws dealing with compassionate release don’t allow people with violent and sex offenses to receive a compassionate furlough from prison.

She said that while there is some risk that someone with dementia may show aggression whether or not they have an incarceration history, the research shows that the dangers of violence by older people decreases with age. If anything, she said, the concern has more to do with caretakers mistreating the incarcerated elders, not the other way around.

Then there is the cost to consider.

“Older people in prison are accountable to pay with time for their crimes, but taxpayers are paying the bill,” she said. “We have to ask ourselves, do we want to continue to pay for the excessive staff of correctional officers, in addition the medical staff, for someone who can’t even get up to walk?”

Maschi warned that merely releasing incarcerated elders isn’t going to solve the overpopulation problem or associated costs to the public. She said that more social workers would be needed to find housing and other supports for the infirm and their families. While going home to family might be the best route for the older prisoners, more often than not it’s not an option.

Regardless whether a family or an institution provides care after the release, the security costs would be eliminated—and that’s a big savings, she said.

“It costs three to five times more to keep an elderly person in prison than a younger person. In numbers, that’s $68,000 compared to $22,000 annually,” she said.

Maschi cited a report released earlier this month by the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice that analyzed the impact of the aging prison population within the federal system alone. The report stated that in 2013 the federal government spent approximately $881 million, or 19 percent of its total budget, to incarcerate aging inmates.

“With the release of these reports, people are beginning to ‘pay’ attention to the costly problem,” said Maschi.

“Eric Garner getting killed for having cigarettes in his hand is just too much,” said Tina Maschi, Ph.D., associate professor at the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS). Maschi was speaking of Fordham’s Second Annual Human Rights Day Celebration, when her conversation took an invariable turn toward current events that carry an intractable link.

On Dec. 13 from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m, GSS’s Be The Evidence Project will mark Human Rights Day, which officially takes place on Dec. 10., with a daylong event at the Pope Auditorium. GSS students will present research and several films will be screened, followed by panel discussions. The event is free and open to the public.

Since the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, 1948, Maschi said that much progress has been made, but much needs to be done on a local level. She quoted Elanor Roosevelt, who was instrumental in drafting the Human Rights document.

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world,” Roosevelt said in 1958. “Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works.”

“Our human rights are not far away, but close to home—right here in New York City,” said Maschi. “We’re a microcosm of the world, we have all the diversity. And if we find a way to respond to human rights here, we can be a model for the world.”

Maschi said that many civil rights issues are human rights issues that stretch far beyond any one issue. Issues are diverse and one need not limit oneself to one area of concern.

“I have multiple social locations that make want to speak out. It’s not just about me but what’s happening with other people. We need to really examine older people’s rights, racial justice, prisoner’s rights, women’s rights, gay rights,” she said. “It’s about treating people with respect.”

RSVP. For more information contact [email protected].

The evening films will begin with Edie and Thea: A Very Long Engagement at 5 p.m. A second film, Building a Partnership Society, begins at 7 p.m.  

Sponsors include: Be the Evidence, Fordham University GSS Policy-Human Rights Social Justice Sequence, Long Island University, Ramapo College, Amnesty International, and SW Rising.

Ray Brito is a member of Figures-in-Flight Released,
a dance group composed of formerly incarcerated men.
Photo by Michael Dames

With more than 2.4 million people currently behind bars, America is the world’s No. 1 incarcerator.

And of those who will be released, 50 percent will return to prison within their first three years of freedom.

“That’s a terrible thing to project around the world,” said Katherine Vockins, who presented the statistics at the National Organization of Forensic Social Work conference at Fordham on July 26.

Vockins is the founder and executive director of Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA). A businesswoman who also enjoyed community theater, Vockins devised the group while volunteering with her husband at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. A group of inmates asked for her help with a play they’d written, which Vockins helped turn into a production. Within the year, RTA was born.

In the 18 years since, RTA has grown to serve 150 incarcerated men and women in five medium and maximum security prisons throughout New York state. It offers a variety of workshops, including theater, dance, creative writing, film, visual art, dramatic literature, and voice.

“We are using art to teach critical life skills and social skills, which social service agencies have said is the missing link when people come home after being in prison for a long time,” Vockins said.

RTA helps give the incarcerated population a much-needed outlet, said Vockins. “It’s a chance to have emotions, to show emotions, to acknowledge fear and happiness—to be human again. Because the mask worn behind the walls changes the way people act and feel.”

The benefits of these groups have been proven, she said: a John Jay College study found better disciplinary and coping skills in prisoners who have been exposed to the arts, while a SUNY Purchase College study showed that the RTA participants finished their GEDs and moved on to post-secondary education faster than average.

The creative arts facilitate a positive change in incarcerated men and women, one which serving a prison term does not provide, Vockins said.

“For humanitarian reasons, for public safety reasons, and for just good old-fashioned economic reasons, we should change the way people come out of prison. They should come out healed and ready to come back and do something positive,” she said.

Andre Noel first came in contact with RTA while serving 15 years in the Woodbourne Correctional Facility. RTA’s dance group, Figures-in-Flight, had such a profound impact on Noel that, after completing his sentence, he vowed to continue dancing. The result was Figures-in-Flight Released, which performed at the Lincoln Center campus as part of NOFSW.

“We bring a message with us,” said Noel, the company’s director. “We want to express to society that we’re all human beings—we’ve been reformed and we’ve changed our lives. We continue dancing not just for entertainment, but to show the world that we’re capable of becoming successful in whatever we choose to accomplish.”

The group also reaches out to youth groups in the hopes of sparing them the ordeal of prison.

“We were kids when we got incarcerated,” he said. “Kids need an outlet. We try to help kids who are at risk to also express themselves through movement—to channel their anger and everything they have going on their lives.”

Woodbourne dance instructor Susan Slotnik helped choreograph the group’s dances, although some are also improvised.

“None of our movements are random, and the same movement doesn’t necessarily have to mean the same thing for each of us,” said dancer Ray Brito, who served 19 years at Woodbourne. “When we do a reaching move, one might be trying to pull himself toward a particular goal while another might be thinking about reaching toward a loved one.”

Brito credits RTA with not only helping to change the course of his life, but also keeping him going during the dark days of his imprisonment.

“In prison, everything was cold. We all knew we were in prison and couldn’t forget that,” he said. “But in dance, the aim was to feel free…  to just pay attention to yourself and nothing else.

“Attention is the very foundation of our program,” he said. “You have to be able to stand at attention, to be able to feel every breath, every heartbeat while also staying in-tuned to everything that’s going on around you. That might sound simple, but coming from our backgrounds, most of us made the mistakes that we did because we didn’t pay attention.”

Andre Noel, director of Figures-in-Flight Released

Photos by Michael Dames

Figures-in-Flight Released members include Andre Noel, Ray Brito, Jeffrey Rivera, Andre Kelley, David Montalvo, and Jason Bermudez. The group as part of the National Organization of Forensic Social Work conference, co-sponsored by Be The Evidence International and the NOFSW.

— Joanna Klimaski Mercuri

First the marginalized come forward. Then their families, friends, and allies join.

But in all civil rights movements, it is when the unlikely allies step forward that a tipping point is reached.

On June 18, Fordham’s Be the Evidence Project(BTEP) held “What a Tipping Point Looks Like: LGBTQ Rights and Future,” featuring Kate Kendell, attorney and executive director the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The talk was the latest installment of BTEP’s town hall speaker series.

In terms of rights and advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals, Kendell said, the country has reached that tipping point.

“Every civil rights movement has had the same trajectory,” Kendell said. “No marginalized group can do it by itself, because it’s not big enough. You need allies. But the moment that’s critical to the tipping point is when you get unlikely allies—the people you didn’t expect to show up for you.”

For the LGBT community, she said, those people showed up in the form of President Obama, who voiced his support of LGBT rights prior to the November election, and Ted Olson, who along with David Boies made a federal constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8.

“That’s how we hit the tipping point… People understood our humanity,” she said. “I’ve never seen, nor could I have imagined the time that we’re in right now—this sort of ‘best of times’ place for the LGBT community.”

Contributing to the “best of times” was the fact that while Kendell was presenting her talk at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, 230 miles away the United States Supreme Court was deliberating the constitutionality of Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which restricts federal marriage recognition and benefits to opposite-sex couples.

Kendell said she is optimistic for LGBT rights and advocacy. But she cautioned that even a favorable outcome for the LGBT community does not mean that advocacy is no longer needed.

“There’s no doubt we’re in a ‘best of times’ moment, but we’re still very much in a difficult time, especially for those who are poor, of color, or live in a rural area,” she said. “The tipping point is not the same as the end. There’s a long, long descent before you come to the end.

“I hope that every ally—unlikely or not—will look around and say, ‘Who’s not with us? Who’s being left behind?’ and then show up for the rest of the community. Because we’re only here now because other people looked around and said that same thing for us.”

Responding to Kendell’s talk was a panel of social workers, mental health professionals, and LGBT advocates, including:

• Tina Maschi, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) and founder and executive director of BTEP;
• Jo Rees, Ph.D., assistant professor of social work at Long Island University, Brooklyn;
• Eileen Klein, Ph.D., assistant professor of social work at Ramapo College;
• Derek Brown, Ph.D., assistant dean of admissions at GSS; and
• Jacwynne Danee Sergeant, an M.S.W. student at GSS researching LGBT youth and mental health.

The panelists remarked that setbacks along the way have made efforts to advocate for the LGBT community seem, at times, an endless struggle.

“It was only in 1973 that psychiatry considered homosexuality a mental illness,” Klein said. “So as much as it seems like things are moving fast, it also sometimes seems like things are plodding along. There are many bumps in the road.”

But when progress seems slow, it is important to remember that small efforts count as much as large ones, Maschi said.

“There are macro-level interventions, such as developing laws and policies sensitive to LGBT and other socially-disadvantaged groups, but the power of micro-interventions on a personal level should not be underestimated,” she said.

“The way we communicate with one another while working toward a larger change does make a difference, and to me that is something achievable, that’s something we can start doing right now.”

A video of the event is posted on the National Organization of Forensic Social Work’s website.

BTEP, run out of the Graduate School of Social Service, is intended to create awareness of human rights and social justice issues through research, advocacy, and education. Its town hall speaker series highlights important social issues in order to bring them to the awareness of the University and local community.

The murder of Mark Carson, who was shot and killed in Greenwich Village in an anti-gay hate crime, brought a message to New York City: though we have come far in ensuring the rights of the LGBTQ community, it is not nearly far enough.

With the aim of promoting social justice and a culture of tolerance, Fordham’s Be The Evidence Project (BTEP) will host a presentation and follow-up dialogue on the current standing and future of LGBTQ rights.

“What a Tipping Point Looks Like: LGBTQ Rights and Future”
Tuesday, June 18
12:30 p.m.
South Lounge | Lowenstein Center | Lincoln Center Campus
113 West 60th Street | New York, NY  10023

“Everyone individual is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect, and within that is equality. But there are certain populations that do not have equality, and that is the LGBTQ population,” said Tina Maschi, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Graduate School of Social Service and founder and director of BTEP.

“If you have to negotiate your identity by not disclosing it, then you are passing for the majority, but you’re compromising who you are and your right to be who you are.”

The presentation will feature Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a national legal organization committed to advancing the legal and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families.

Maschi said she hopes that by featuring a national advocate for LGBTQ rights, the forum will generate public support to make visible a population that often suffers invisibly.

“We can have laws on the books, but unless there’s a spirit of tolerance in the population, then we won’t see change,” she said. “Policies are necessary, but they’re not sufficient. They need to be supported by the community. So I’m hoping that people who attend the event will become empowered to speak out and to become allies, and to realize that if everyone doesn’t have rights, then it affects us all.”

Tuesday’s event is the spring installment of BTEP’s Town Hall Speaker Series, which aims to focus on issues the impact the local as well as global community.

The event is free and open to the public and includes lunch.

Fore more information, email BTEP.