The Legal Aid Society has filed a mass writ of habeas corpus against the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) seeking the immediate release of 91 incarcerated clients currently held on a parole warrant and one dollar bail, because those clients have been denied their rights to a release hearing guaranteed by the Less Is More Act, as reported by The New York Times.

Under the Less Is More Act, DOCCS is required to ensure that every New Yorker held at Rikers Island on a parole warrant has a hearing within 24 hours to determine whether an individual should be released. DOCCS has agreed to hold such hearings on all new cases commencing March 1, 2022, and beyond but has refused to hold these hearings for pending cases, depriving incarcerated New Yorkers an opportunity for release and ignoring the Legislature’s intent to end mandatory detention.

Less Is More also explicitly requires that all of these parole violation hearings must now occur in community courthouses, as opposed to behind closed doors in secrecy at Rikers Island. As of yesterday, the day the law became effective, DOCCS has also failed to comply with this requirement.

“Ending mandatory detention is a central component of the Less Is More Act, and DOCCS is simply violating the spirit and explicit intention of this transformative law by refusing to hold these release hearings for everyone in its custody,” said Lorraine McEvilley, Director of the Parole Revocation Defense Unit at The Legal Aid Society. “If DOCCS is unwilling to afford our clients this due process, as clearly expressed by the law, then this litigation is the only remedy to protect our clients and their newly enshrined rights.”