What It’s Like to Leave Prison During a Pandemic

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​​​​​​​​For 13 years, Richard Gonzalez had nothing but time. Now he can’t find enough.

Until a year ago, he had spent his days mostly reading and thinking. In prison. He was serving a sentence for armed burglary when he was released eight months early — in the middle of a global pandemic.
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In the fall of 2020, as the coronavirus spread quickly through prison populations, many states, including New York and New Jersey, released people early in an attempt to halt the spread of the virus.

New York State has released at least 3,900 people since the beginning of the pandemic. New Jersey released some 5,300 early. Richard was one of them.
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The path from an open cell door to home has always had its obstacles. Richard’s sister — who works with the formerly incarcerated — has guided him in ways overworked agencies often can’t.

But for most people, piecing together a patchwork safety net is a daunting task. The recidivism rate in New Jersey is just shy of 30 percent. In New York, 43 percent of people released from prison eventually return. In New York City, more than half of the people leaving prison are sent into the shelter system.
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During a pandemic, the journey to finding places to live, work and study can become a labyrinth, especially for those who have no one waiting on the other side.

Genisis Goss returned to New York City in June, after serving a sentence for murder and robbery. A transgender woman who has long fended for herself, she came back to a place where waterfront promenades are now lined by luxury towers and her onetime havens have vanished.
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Still, some, like Mychal Pagan, found a silver lining: His application to a small nurturing community in the Bronx was accepted, providing him with a sanctuary to focus on his studies.

We spent 12 months with Richard, Genisis and Mychal, as they were released into a new and uncertain world.

Richard was released from Northern State Prison in November 2020 after serving 13 years for armed burglary.Perth Amboy, N.J.

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The best gifts Richard got this year were his driver’s license and a beat-up Chevy from a relative. No more spending $12 on taxis to do laundry or buy groceries, or waiting an hour for the bus after finishing a night shift at his warehouse job to get to school the same morning.
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“Those were the final pieces I needed to be normal,” said Richard, 44. “Once instead of going home, I stayed up 48 hours, just work and school, work and school. By the time I got home I was dying!”
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Normal is good, and Richard doesn’t take it for granted as he reconciles his past with his future.

In the year since his release, he has doubled down on school, his family and himself, relishing moments with his nephews and nieces at the mall and the playground, or quiet time in the sunny living room of his new fianceé’s place.
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Richard’s life before prison was marked by poverty, domestic violence and drug use. His mother, he said, had mental health issues, while her boyfriend at the time would beat Richard and his siblings.
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He started selling heroin, he said, when he was 14. By 16, he was using, and his entanglements with the law began. After endless cycles of arrest-release-relapse-repeat, he was sentenced in 2008 to 15 years. His time inside, along with therapy, led him away from prison gangs and drugs.

He credits his progress to finally confronting his childhood trauma and anxiety. He earned his high school equivalency diploma and began college classes while still in prison.
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When he was released, the Department of Corrections connected him with an advocacy and service group for the formerly incarcerated that was run by a former New Jersey governor, James McGreevey.
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While that was helpful, Richard credited his sister Carmen Mercado, who works for the New Jersey Department of Labor, with helping him get a summer internship at an urban farm, as well as finding a local group whose expertise helped him cut through red tape to get a government ID two months after his release.
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“Even if I wanted to work, I couldn’t without an ID,” he said. “I applied to Amazon because they’re always hiring, but I couldn’t even go to the warehouse because you needed ID to get in.”
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Lack of an ID also prevented him from opening a bank account, so instead he let a relative deposit the money and give him access when needed. As it is, he only carries $40 with him, enough to satisfy a mugger. Not that he is unaware of his surroundings. When he sees groups of young men outside bodegas or inside parks, he crosses the street.
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“Things could happen with them that could affect me when I walk by,” he said. “Could be a cop sees a guy throw a bag on the sidewalk. Or a cop might ask what I’m doing there. At least I don’t look young anymore. These kids who get busted, they’re automatically disqualified from some government jobs because of a conviction.”
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He speaks quietly, his glasses lending him a bookish look, which allows him to fit in at Rutgers University, where he is studying public policy.

He hasn’t let too many people know of his past, but when the issue of prison reform arose in a criminal justice class, he spoke from deep experience.
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“We’re quick to blame the person and not the conditions that led to that crime,” he said. “A person commits a crime, and that’s wrong, but you have to look at the conditions that led to it. You have to look at systemic racism in schools and housing. That’s not directly under justice reform, but it affects it.”
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With the mobility that comes with his new car and license, he is eager to keep at his commitments to work — he has a new day job operating a forklift — and school, where he has shifted to night classes. He is optimistic heading into his second year of freedom, even though the threat of the coronavirus looms.
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“It seems like it never ends,” he said of the pandemic. “I was hopeful when I came out. Now we don’t know when it’s going to end. But it’s not going to affect my plans.”

Genisis was released from Attica Correctional Facility in June 2021 after serving 25 years for murder and robbery.Queens, N.Y.

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Genisis emerged from the Port Authority late one night onto streets lined with ghosts that the gleam of high rises could not dispel.

The piers, streets and clubs – which were often the first stop for transgender women who relied on sex work, and each other, to survive – were memories.
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She had begun her sentence 25 years ago, after she was found guilty of second-degree murder for her involvement in a robbery in which a person was killed.

Before that she had been arrested a handful of times on robbery and prostitution charges. When she was released back then, she recalled, she could count on the area around Port Authority: “We knew if we went there you could get money fast, because there was always that stroll. It‘s gone. I’m not used to this. Sometimes I feel like I want to be back in jail.”
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Her melancholy aside, Genisis, 51, is accustomed to being on her own as a transgender Black woman who ran away from home at 14. Like others of her generation in New York, she found her family in the city’s ballroom and dance community in the 1980s.

Transgender youth are particularly more likely to interact with the criminal justice system, according to a 2017 report by the Center for American Progress, which also noted higher rates of homelessness or being placed in facilities for the wrong gender. Genisis’s run-ins with law enforcement began as early as 1986.
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She has reconnected with some from her old community, though many of her friends have left the city or died. The lack of a home to return to made her release more complicated.

She said an aunt she had hoped to live with in Brooklyn told her: “There’s only one person who wears a dress in this house.”
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After being released from Attica, Genisis was placed in a hotel in eastern Queens run by Exodus Transitional Community. The commute to Manhattan, where she obtains social services and counseling at Housing Works and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, is often complicated by her lack of subway fare or unexpected emergencies.
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Several nights she has had to spend away from the hotel after losing her MetroCard; once, she was unable to catch the subway after it shut down early during a severe summer storm.

One night, she slept at Port Authority during a downpour and woke to find that a thief had sliced the strap on her bag and had taken everything.
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And even though she returned to a city where transgender rights are a topic of concern and advocacy, it is tough for her to get her bearings after being away for so long. She still experiences disrespect at the hotel in Middle Village when other residents use the wrong pronoun or, worse, her deadname.
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So she mostly keeps to herself. In her room, she rests, grappling with the dating apps on her phone before preparing for a night socializing and working at clubs and bars. She hasn’t gotten used to closed doors, she said, even in a pandemic. In prison, she could at least put her arms through the bars.

“The world is moving too fast around me,” she said. “Just getting hold of what I need so I can do what I need to do is hard.”
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She is determined, however, to get a place of her own. And she continues to rely on sex work to pay for her clothes and hormones, not to mention food.

“When you’re young and pretty, you’re gonna get it,” she said, recalling nights at Times Square clubs Danceteria and La Escuelita in the 1980s.
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“These kids,” she continued, “They get everything handed to them. We had to hit the pavement to get what we wanted.”

Granted, she said, Times Square and her old hangouts have a worn edge that reminds her to stay alert. She shares this thought with others during virtual meetings hosted by an advocacy group meant to teach other transgender people how to stay safe and aware of their rights.
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As for herself, she wants to lie low.

“I’m going to find the first hole to jump into,” she said. “If I can get one or two people I can save, then my job is done.”

Mychal was released from Wallkill Correctional Facility in April 2020 after serving 13 years on a burglary charge.The Bronx, N.Y.

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The day Mychal Pagan got the key to his room at Ignacio House of Studies in the Bronx, he felt relief for the first time in more than a decade. Inside his sparsely furnished apartment, he thought of the plans he had upon his release.
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“Everything shut down, so I had to reimagine what I was going to do with my life,” he said. “And that involved focusing on school.” He continued: “To everybody else on the outside, the pandemic was a nightmare. For me, it was an ideal situation to come home to.”
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Mychal had always been the responsible big brother, the one who helped his mother — who was only 15 when she had him — raise his four siblings in tumultuous existence among homes and apartments on Long Island.

By third grade, he said, he was changing diapers and burping babies while his mother worked overnight as a nurse’s aide.
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“I was like a father figure in a way, keeping the house clean, keeping the kids clean and well-mannered,” said Mychal, who is now 36 and continuing his studies in visual arts and social sciences at New York University through a program he began while in prison. “I had to do it. But as I became older it became burdensome. I didn’t have a life or childhood.”
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After work one day in 2007, a younger brother asked him to help some friends collect a debt. He agreed, still feeling the tug of brotherly responsibility. The night ended with a home invasion. Mychal agreed to a plea for a 15-year sentence. He was released early for good behavior.

His brother went to trial and is still imprisoned for assault and burglary. He is not eligible for parole until August 2050.
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He remembered the jolt he felt upon entering prison: “This is not me,” he thought.

Like many others inside, he embraced books as education and escape, starting with Socrates and Plato and on to Dickens, Dumas, Tolstoy and Byron. “I didn’t read a book unless the author was dead,” he said. “At first, it was almost like a sedative. But some part of me also knew this would be over one day and I had issues to resolve.”
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His life has revolved around three places since his release: Ignacio House, New York University and Long Island, where his mother and aunt still live.

Mychal has led other residents in community projects, including building and tending a vegetable garden and painting murals and aphorisms on the walls of a common room.
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“The activities they had just grounded me there,” he said of Ignacio House. “My interest in photography and film were coming to the surface, and I could just think about them.”

At school, his projects reflect that growing interest. He recently won a grant to produce a series of short films on the economic impact of incarceration: from the prisoners who are paid cents per hour for their labor, to the families who have to travel hours to visit relatives.
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“It costs to be in jail,” he said. “If the male of a household goes to prison, you remove that source of income from that household. He goes from a breadwinner to an expense. It’s a depressing paradigm shift.”
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Mychal and his family felt that shift when he went inside. Now, he's trying to make up for it by helping out his mom and sister as much as he can. In October, he visited his mother in Huntington Station on Long Island. It was the first time he had seen her since school began, and he arrived clutching some window blinds he was to install at his sister’s house.

“He was always a smart boy,” she said. “When something broke in the house, he wouldn’t throw it away, he’d fix it.”
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She had prepared food and a cake for her birthday, which he ate before heading to his sister’s.

“Work, that’s what I do,” he said, jokingly. “I paint things, I fix bathrooms. It doesn’t change.”
  • Text by David Gonzalez
  • Photography by Hannah Yoon, a freelance journalist based in Philadelphia. She was the recipient of a photography grant from the National Geographic Society.
  • Produced and edited by Jeffrey Furticella and Meghan Louttit
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