Once Upon a Parole, by Prisoner K
We've known Prisoner K since the first Rikers workshop John facilitated. He's recently come home from his stay upstate, and here he recounts his first experience with parole on his release.
It’s called a split. That’s when you serve your prison term and go on parole. On the backend. That’s another term. ’I have life on the backend.’ That means whenever you finish your term, you have parole for life. On the backend.
Many see parole as a continuation of prison. You’re doing a 5-10 split (5 years in prison, 10 on parole) and they’ll say, ‘Oh you’re doing 15.’ (“They” being anyone familiar with DOCCS.)
You walk out of prison and you have 24 hours to see parole. (God forbid you get 25 hours of non-supervision. The threat you pose to the community!)
Did I say ‘see’? No. The term they use is ‘report.’ You report to parole. No one wants to see parole. No, we report. We report because to not do so is a violation. And violations are the meat and potatoes of the Department of Corrections and Supervisions. We’re the gravy.
On my first visit to parole, I sit quietly waiting to see my newly assigned parole officer. Hands in lap, mask on. I dare say I wasn’t expecting Santa Claus, but neither did I expect Satan.
As I sit, one of the other parolees is called by their officer. (We all sit in a sterile room of hard benches and cold walls, COVID-distanced. A door opens. A P.O. steps out, calls your name and you dutifully stand up, go over and disappear behind the door.) I watch as the P.O. calls her parolee. He strides across the floor, pants sagging, long dark tee. He wears a hat. (One of the first things I noticed was a sign forbidding the wearing of headgear.) The parolee walks up to the door. He and his P.O. have a leisurely exchange. It appears there is some kind of relationship. He goes through the door and it shuts quietly.
I wait. Not long after, the door comes open again. A different officer comes through the door for some reason or other. As the door closes, I see the parolee they called in. He’s assumed the position. The P.O., under the watchful eye of a colleague, has finished frisking the parolee. Now, her colleague gently pulls one parolee wrist behind the parole’s back while smoothly slipping out the cuffs.
The door shuts quietly.
I sit. Soon, I’ll be called.
Illustration by Prisoner K
Prisoner K is a working technical writer. He values his and his family’s privacy and like John has read Kafka’s The Trial, thus the pseudonym.