Making Up for Lost 'Street Time'
D.C. Bill Would Count Years on Parole Toward Sentence
"They just want to lock people up," said Napoleon Graves, whose parole was revoked after a dispute.
(By Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)
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Saturday, July 12, 2008
Napoleon Graves's path back to prison started with a familiar apartment-dweller annoyance: complaints to an upstairs neighbor about loud music.
The dispute came to a head in June 2006 when the neighbor chased him, waving a gun. Graves said he knocked the weapon away, and the man ran off.
Police responding to the ruckus arrested Graves, a parolee previously convicted in the District of attempted drug distribution and assault. As a convicted felon, Graves was charged with possessing the gun he took from his neighbor.
Days later, the charges were dropped. But that was not the end of it.
The U.S. Parole Commission, which oversees all D.C. ex-offenders, revoked his probation and sent him back to prison.
The five years he had spent on parole, however, were not credited; he resumed serving the remainder of his sentence as if his time on parole -- his "street time" -- had never happened.
His 1984 sentence of four to 12 years, split by two parole revocations, will take until 2014 to complete.
"They don't care," said Graves, now 44, released from prison this year but still under the scrutiny of a parole officer. "They just want to lock people up."
Now, the District is poised to join 24 states that give credit for street time, under a bill before the D.C. Council.
According to the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, 10 states, including Virginia, do not count time on parole as part of the sentence. Maryland is among 14 states that allow discretion on whether to allow or deny credit.
Parole, or discretionary early release, no longer exists in much of the country.
In 2000, the practice was abolished in the District for people convicted of new crimes. But every year, about 1,000 people who were sentenced before 2000 have their parole revoked, according to statistics provided by the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. That represents about 20 percent of everyone on parole and under supervised release in the District.
