844: This Is the Case of Henry Dee
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From WB EZ Chicago, this is American Life, I'm our cause. So this is going to be one of those shows where I'm just going to save you things here and then get out of the way. It's based on a single, kind of remarkable recording, everything that happens all over the country, but you never really get to hear it. It's a parole hearing in Illinois, 13 people in a small room having to decide should a man be released from prison. This fact surprised me. Civil hearings, the system where somebody with a long sentence comes before somebody and gets a chance to get out, that's been abolished in about a third of all the states, most other states have limited it in various ways. The reasons for that, people in prison and their advocates said it was really subjective, racially biased, unfair, there was no way to repeal the decisions, said too few people were being set free. Conservatives meanwhile found it too lenient, they said too many people were being set free. So very few people get out of prison thanks to a parole board hearing, determining if it's time for their incarceration to end. Though right now, there is a lot of talk about expanding the use of parole boards, making more people eligible. There's a bill in New York State Assembly, two committing bills in Illinois, and there are another states too. Reporter Ben Austin got interested in the question at the heart of all those. What is actually happening in those parole board hearings? How do they make these monumental decisions? What sways them? What doesn't? These boards are trying to adjudicate these very squishy, nearly impossible questions, like when is a person rehabilitated? How can you tell? When should a long prison sentence end? This next question is almost too grand to say out loud, but it is in there too. What is justice? All this plays out in this weird backwater of the judicial system, it doesn't get a lot of scrutiny. Can you remember the last time you saw a news story, any news story about a parole board hearing? And for all the TV dramas about, I have to say, almost every aspect of the criminal justice system in all of its parts, there is none set in a parole board. Ben lives in Illinois and spent more than a year going to every parole board hearing there. They have been once a month, each one looking at five or ten cases, and he put together what you're about to hear. The man they're considering for release in this case is 72 years old, been locked up for almost 50 years, most of his life. The parole board has some information about the case, but definitely not everything you would want. This part of what makes it so interesting listening to this, hearing how they deal with that. It is actually one of the hearings that Ben sat through on his very first day going to
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