Grant clemency to deserving New Yorkers all year long

The holiday season is a time of reflection, compassion and kindness. That’s why around this time of year, criminal justice advocates across the country rally for clemency for deserving incarcerated individuals.

The act of granting clemency — the exclusive power of the governor — is an act of grace, and one that strikes all three notes of the holiday chord. When clemency is granted, communities celebrate, families rejoice and leadership is praised.

However, clemency shouldn’t be confined to a single month around the holidays or reduced to a feel-good news headline. Executive clemency is a powerful tool — a life-altering act — that should be used year round. It can be granted freely by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to support and demonstrate New York’s commitment to fairness, justice and righting the wrongs of a broken and often racially discriminatory system.

This difficult year has demonstrated why we must separate clemency from the calendar. The need for more clemencies and other forms of decarceration has only grown more urgent with COVID -19, which has claimed 29 people in prisons to date and continues to wreak havoc in prisons where social distancing

is nearly impossible and testing is limited.

Currently, there are hundreds of clemency applications awaiting review at the Capitol. Many have been vetted by an attorney to ensure they meet standards for eligibility and public safety. Each application represents a human being stuck in a prison cell and, too often, forgotten. Since the pandemic, dozens of those applications have a new note attached — they’re at special risk of complications or death from COVID -19 due to serious medical conditions.

These are mothers, daughters, brothers and fathers. They are New Yorkers who have made mistakes, served their time and taken responsibility for their actions. But their potential to contribute to our great state — right when we need every New Yorker working hard to push us forward — is limited not by their pasts, but by the length of their stay behind bars.

And they are safe to release. Evidence proves people who serve lengthy sentences and demonstrate rehabilitation aren’t likely to commit violent crimes when released. The myth of high recidivism is largely due to New York’s unfair parole system that reincarcerates people for noncriminal offenses at a blistering rate.

In fact, clemency recipients have gone on to make enormous contributions to our society. New Yorkers like Khalil A. Cumberbatch, Dominic Dupont, and many others who have received clemency from Cuomo have demonstrated the transformative power of clemency, and have become powerful voices for change in their communities.

If the moral, health and public safety arguments fail to make the case for clemencies, there’s a financial argument to be made as well. Needless incarceration is a ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars — at a moment when the state faces a $59 billion budget shortfall through 2022. Broad use of clemency can reduce that burden immediately.

Cuomo deserves real credit when it comes to criminal justice reform. Since taking office in 2011, his administration spearheaded a 21 percent decrease of the state’s prison population. He has advanced and signed into law critical criminal justice reforms, from the elimination of police secrecy statutes to ensuring that money plays no role in the justice system. Thanks to these acts, his administration has helped make New York a leading state in promoting safety and fairness.

As we near the end of a chaotic and devastating year that brought a pandemic, economic instability and a profound reckoning on race, now is the time to add something else to that list of New York qualities: compassion. And that starts with granting clemency to all deserving New Yorkers. But it must not end with the season.