Prison Inmate Counselor
Experience gained during a long career can lead to serving others, voluntarily, with no further need to earn income during retirement.
RD was born in the Bronx section of New York City, one of four siblings. His father was a salesman. His mother was a homemaker.
FIRST JOB TOO HARD? PREPARE TO TRY SOMETHING ELSE
After graduating from college, RD’s first career goal was to teach middle school age students. However, having to teach and concurrently supervize a classroom full of pre-teens “was too hard a job for me” so he returned to academia to obtain a master’s degree in counseling.
DEDICATION TO SECOND CAREER LEADS TO JOB PROMOTIONS
RD’s first job consistent with his second career goal was Parole Officer. Dedicated to his new profession, RD was promoted to assistant regional director of parole operations, overseeing two of the five boroughs (Brooklyn and Queens) within New York City. Eventually RD was recommended to the New York State Governor for appointment to the state Parole Board, which decides whether prison inmates are sufficiently reformed to justify their release from prison, to be supervized as a parolee for a specific minimal time before possibly being freed from any supervizion. Eventually RD was appointed its Chairman.
“It is an easy job if you don’t have courage and you don’t have compassion,” RD told The New York Times in 2010. “Because then you really don’t care. And then it is easy to make whatever decision you want without feeling guilty, without feeling maybe I made the wrong decision.”
POST RETIREMENT OPPORTUNITY TO IMPROVE LIVES OF OTHERS
Following his retirement from the Parole Board, RD attended a prison graduation ceremony for inmates who had finally earned their high school equivilency diplomas. An inmate (Johnny Hincapie), who had been convicted decades earlier as part of a gang which stabbed a 22 yr old to death, who had been protecting his mother on a Manhattan subway platform, gave RD a copy of a newspaper article questioning the validity of the prosecution of Mr. Hincapie. RD, who had heard many claims of innocence from convicted felons during his decades of service within the parole system, was intrigued by the possibility of a wrongful criminal conviction and volunteered to help track down potential witnesses and persuading them to testify. He also persuaded an experienced attorney to take on the case on a volunteer basis.
The convict, Hincapie, claimed his confession had been coerced. Such a claim is common but when RD found witnesses identified within the police investigation but never presented at trial, “Nobody puts Johnny on the (subway) platform.” Eventually a court overturned the conviction on the basis of new evidence and prosecutorial misconduct. By then, Hincapie had been imprisoned for 25 years. Prosecutors decided not to retry him.
CAREER EXPERIENCE BRINGS KNOWLEDGE AND CREDIBILITY TO VOLUNTEER WORK
RD began advocating on behalf of inmates as a volunteer after retiring from the Parole Board. “Bob became an advocate for all prison inmates – not just those claiming wrongful conviction – and a vocal critic of the arbitrary and arcane parole system” said a journalist who had written the intriguing story about the Hincapie conviction. “He (RD) spent much of his retirement visiting prisons, talking with inmates and writing letters to the parole board. He chose his subjects carefully in order to preserve his credibility among his former co-workers within the parole system.
