USA: what statistics can’t explain about life on parole

Last Saturday my family and I took the ferry to Governors Island, where we happened upon a gallery hosting an exhibit, “Escaping Time: Art From U.S. Prisons.”

Pinned to the wall in an upstairs back room was a bouquet of roses, fashioned out of toilet paper and stained in a palette of tangy pastels. The artist, Jairo Pastoressa, had no access to art supplies during his time on Rikers Island, a woman there told me, so he used Kool-Aid for paint.

She told Mr. Pastoressa’s story passionately. (I later guessed, based on her first name and some internet searching, that she must have been his mother.) He waited six years to go on trial for murder, then finally agreed to a plea deal. When I asked her what happened, she replied, “What happened is the system is broken.”

I bought the roses.

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