The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
She’s his rock, but parolee can’t see her
System designed to help former inmates can hold them back.
HARTFORD, CONN. — During Erroll Brantley Jr.’s nearly two years in prison, his girlfriend, Katherine Eaton, visited him three times a week, the maximum allowed. She wrote him letters and spent hundreds of dollars on phone calls, during which the couple spoke of their longing to be back together in her three-bedroom house with the picture window. Amid the I love yous and I miss yous, she promised to help him stay off heroin and readjust to life outside.
But when Brantley was released on parole, he got some bad news: He would not be allowed to live with his beloved Katherine. Or see her. Or even call her.
At first, Brantley, a chef by trade, shrugged off the no-contact rule. His first day out, he went to Eaton’s house, where she had stocked the fridge with shallots and jalapeños. The couple went hiking in the woods and shopping at Marshalls. They cooked Thanksgiving dinner.
“She’s my best friend. She’s my support system,” Brantley said. “She’s my rock.”
But when Brantley walked into the parole office with Eaton, he went a step too far. His parole officer, Mark Pawlich, strapped an ankle monitor on him and sent him to a halfway house. “The state,” Brantley protested, “has broken us up.” The state can do that. Parolees may not live behind bars, but they are far from free. Their parole officers have enormous power to dictate whom they can see, where they can go, and whether they are allowed to do perfectly legal things like have a beer. Breaking those rules can land a parolee back in jail — the decision is up to the parole officer.
In some ways, Brantley was fortunate. He faced a system far less punitive than it might have been a few years earlier, thanks to Connecticut’s efforts to give parolees more chances to succeed. When Brantley failed a drug test, he wasn’t sent back to prison. Instead, he was ordered into treatment.
But addiction is only one of the many challenges faced by those getting out. As prison populations drop, the number of parolees is increasing — people with layer upon layer of disadvantages that often date to early childhood. For more than a year, “Frontline” and The New York Times followed newly released prisoners as they tried to find homes and jobs, reconnect with loved ones and avoid temptation, sometimes discovering that the system created to help them can also hold them back.
One of them could not buy his daughter the Christmas present she wanted because the halfway house controlled his spending; another, living in her own apartment, was told her boyfriend could not spend the night. For their part, parole officers were making difficult calls about the best interests of their charges, while navigating safety rules such as the one that affected Brantley: no contact between parolees and their past victims.
A Troubling Attitude
Something about Erroll Brantley rubs parole officers the wrong way.
Though they acknowledge that he’s a smart guy, dropping words like “cocksurety” and “self-stigmatized” — they are less impressed when he exhibits the vestiges of a youth spent playing in rock bands and partying. Now 44, he still projects a nonchalance that can raise official hackles.
At their first meeting, Pawlich asked if he had any concerns.
“None at all,” Brantley said.
Pawlich retorted, “That’s a concern.”
After just a few weeks, Brantley went on a heroin bender and checked himself into rehab.
Brantley’s and Eaton’s problems had their roots in his addiction. He and Eaton met in 2012. She eventually took him in as a housemate, then a romance developed. In early 2014, he relapsed. Needing money for a fix, he took the television and, using her car, pawned it.
When he returned to the house, three bags of heroin in his pocket, officers were waiting. Eaton, unable to persuade Brantley to seek help and knowing that the heroin could be laced with a dangerous drug called fentanyl, had called police.
Defining ‘Victim’
Parolees are routinely forbidden to have any contact with past victims, out of both a regard for the victims’ rights and concern for their safety.
Initially, the Department of Correction did not deem Eaton a victim. Charges that Brantley stole her TV and car were dropped. (He was ultimately convicted for an unrelated break-in at an auto shop.) Though victims are not allowed to visit prisoners, she was. The parole board even told Brantley that Eaton would not be listed as a victim. But as Brantley was preparing to move home, someone noticed that she’d called police that day in 2014, and rejected the plan.
Eaton, 34, is adamant that she was never Brantley’s victim or was, at least in one sense only: “Everybody in Erroll’s life has been a victim, if that’s the broad term that they want to use,” she said.
In the couple’s view, Eaton was the best person Brantley could have in his life: She does not use drugs. She has a steady job as a medical assistant. She has never missed a mortgage payment.
Though Brantley chafed at requirements that he account for every hour, he did well at the halfway house. He stayed clean and found a job. The no-contact rule was lifted, and parole officials agreed to review Brantley’s request to live with Eaton.
A parole officer, Jeffrey Simmons, drove to Eaton’s home for an inspection and interview. Things did not go well. Her assertion that she had not been a victim was, to Simmons, evidence that she was hiding something. “As she told the story, she left out pieces of the story,” he said afterward.
He recommended against letting Brantley move home.
Released from the halfway house in April 2016, Brantley moved into and paid rent on a basement apartment. But he flouted the rules, spending much of his time at Eaton’s.
Almost a year passed without incident. Brantley was taking methadone and working. In December, he failed a drug test but regained sobriety quickly.
By March, Brantley thought he was ready for a more normal life. Wanting to end his daily trips to the methadone clinic, he decided to switch to Vivitrol, a shot that blocks opioid receptors for 30 days. First, he had to wean himself off methadone. Overwhelmed by the withdrawal, he began using again.
On Easter Sunday, Brantley asked Eaton for money to buy drugs. They argued. Brantley, who had been drinking, backed Eaton against a wall, kicked her foot, pushed her into her bedroom and turned his back on her, saying, “I just want to punch you.” Instead, he kicked a door so hard it left a hole.
The next day, Eaton went to the police.
By evening, Brantley was back where he started — behind bars.