Crime Problem · NY Parole Reform · May 23, 2026

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$7 Million. Three Bills. Son of Sam Eligible.

On May 23, 2026, the New York Post Metro desk documented a traceable funding architecture: George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and its sister 501(c)(4) Open Society Policy Center have moved roughly $7 millionsince 2018 into a coalition of four New York parole-reform advocacy groups — Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP), the Vera Institute of Justice, the Center for Community Alternatives, and Brooklyn Defender Services. Those four groups, in turn, drafted and now lobby for three bills currently moving through the Democratic supermajorities in Albany.

The bills are S.159 (Fair & Timely Parole) by Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn); S.342 (Earned Time Act) by Sen. Jeremy Cooney (D-Rochester); and S.158 (Second Look Act). A fourth, S.454 (Elder Parole), goes further still — it would create parole eligibility for the life-without-parole pool that currently has none. Under the combined effect, David Berkowitz (Son of Sam), Mark David Chapman(John Lennon’s killer), and thousands of other violent felons would face a parole board legally required to presume release.

The bill’s own justification memo concedes the current Parole Board denies parole on offense severity in “90%” of cases. That is the exact criterion Fair & Timely Parole would functionally eliminate. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers), and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) have not publicly committed. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (D) and Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez (D) have already signed a coalition letter supporting the bills.

• $7MOSF + OSPCmoved into the four-group NY parole-reform coalition since 2018 (NY Post aggregate)
• $11MVera aloneOSF lifetime to the Vera Institute of Justice since 2016 — including a single $10M grant
• 12denialsBerkowitz parole denials to date (most recent May 14, 2024; next eligible May 2026)
• 90%current denial rateon offense severity — the criterion S.159's own justification text concedes and would eliminate
• $3.589BDOCCS FY25NY Department of Corrections budget against which 'savings' are calculated

The funding architecture is not a guess. It is documented in IRS Form 990s, in the Open Society Foundations’ own public grants database, in the InfluenceWatch aggregation, and in the NY Post’s May 23 reporting. Foundation to Promote Open Society (FPOS), George Soros’s primary domestic 501(c)(3), reported $481,275,362 in grantmaking in 2024. The sister 501(c)(4), Open Society Policy Center — now renamed the Open Society Action Fund — reported $239,928,927 across 473 grants in 2023. Combined annual grantmaking exceeds $700 million. The $7 million directed at the New York parole-reform coalition is, in scale, a rounding error for the Soros enterprise. In leverage over a specific state-legislative outcome, it is decisive.

The pipeline runs through three observable layers. First, the Soros Justice Fellowships — an Open Society program that has distributed more than $14 million since 1997 — fund individual reformers. Mujahid Farid, a 2013 Soros Justice Fellow, used his fellowship year to co-found Release Aging People in Prison. Second, OSF and OSPC make institutional grants directly to advocacy groups like Vera ($11M+ lifetime, including a single $10 million grant in 2016), CCA, and Brooklyn Defender Services. Third, those groups draft model legislation, find Albany sponsors, and lobby it through committee.

RAPP operates fiscally under Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE), a California-based fiscal-sponsorship 501(c)(3) (EIN 95-4116679). SEE reported $103.2 million in total assets, $94.6 million in 2024 revenue, and CEO Jennifer Hoffman’s compensation at $319,483. The fiscal-sponsorship structure means RAPP itself does not file its own 990 — its money flows in and out under SEE’s tax shield. That structure is legal. It is also unusually opaque for a group whose name is on the masthead of three NY Senate bills.

There are four bills in the package. They are not redundant. Each targets a different lever of the New York sentencing-and-parole structure. Reading them together is the only honest way to understand the cumulative effect.

The single most consequential statutory change is in S.159. The bill rewrites Executive Law § 259-i(2)(c)(A) — the section that governs the Parole Board’s decision-making standard. Today, that section permits the Board to deny parole based on the “serious nature” of the offense. The bill’s sponsor justification memo concedes that the Board exercises this authority in 90% of denials. S.159 replaces the standard with a presumption of release, which the Board can overcome only by demonstrating a “current and unreasonable risk.”

That phrase is doing all the work. A presumption of release means the Board cannot deny parole because the inmate committed a heinous crime. It can only deny parole if the inmate poses a forward-looking risk — and the longer the inmate has been incarcerated, the harder “current risk” is to prove. An aging Berkowitz, a confined and elderly Chapman, a wheelchair-bound long-server — under the new standard, the gravity of the original murder no longer counts. By design.

“Keeping low-risk older prisoners costs the State between $100,000 and $240,000 annually, compared to approximately $60,000 for younger prisoners. The Fair and Timely Parole Act is projected to save approximately $333 million annually.”

S.159 sponsor justification memo · NY Senate 2025-26 session · Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn)

The fiscal argument is the entire public-facing case. Aging inmates are expensive. Releasing them saves money. The Vera Institute — which received the $10M OSF grant in 2016 and an $11M+ lifetime total — produced the per-inmate cost research the sponsor memo cites. The sponsor justification memo cites Vera as its source. Vera was funded by the donor whose foundation also funds the coalition that wrote the bill. The fiscal claim and the policy claim share a single funder.

The legal effect of these bills splits cleanly along one line: whether an inmate is currently parole-eligible or whether their sentence forbids parole entirely. Understanding that distinction is the difference between an accurate story and a slogan.

David Berkowitz, born Richard David Falco on June 1, 1953, in Brooklyn, killed six people and wounded seven more between July 1976 and July 1977 in a series of shootings the New York tabloids christened the “.44 Caliber Killer” attacks and that Berkowitz himself signed in letters to the press as Son of Sam. He was arrested in Yonkers on August 10, 1977. On May 8, 1978, he pleaded guilty to six counts of second-degree murder and seven counts of attempted second-degree murder. On June 12, 1978, he was sentenced to 25 years to life on each count, to run consecutively. He is now 72. He is housed at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster County. NY DOCCS DIN 78-A-1976.

He has been parole-eligible since 2002. The Board has denied him twelve times. The most recent denial was issued on May 14, 2024. His next interview is scheduled for May 2026 — this month. Each denial decision in his file cites the gravity of the offense as the controlling factor. Under S.159, that controlling factor would be statutorily removed from the Board’s permissible reasoning. The Board would be required to release Berkowitz unless it could affirmatively prove he posed a current and unreasonable risk. A 72-year-old who has been incarcerated for 48 consecutive years, attends a prison ministry, and is described in his file as a model inmate is structurally difficult to characterize as a current risk.

“My home is in heaven, not in the Bronx. Most of all, I attend in order to openly apologize for my past crimes and to express my remorse.”

David Berkowitz · email to the New York Post · May 2026 · ahead of his thirteenth parole interview

That is not a hypothetical. It is the exact reasoning Berkowitz himself laid out, in writing, to a New York newspaper, less than two weeks before the bill funded by the Open Society network reached its next committee. He is 72, he is contrite, and he is publicly telling the Parole Board that he expects to die in prison. The new statutory framework would instruct the Board to release him anyway, on the bill’s logic that custody of contrite older men is a fiscal waste. Six victims. Seven wounded. Forty-eight years served. A statutory presumption that he goes home.

Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon outside the Dakota apartment building on the Upper West Side on the night of December 8, 1980. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in August 1981 and was sentenced to 20 years to life. He has been parole-eligible since 2000. On August 31, 2022, the Parole Board denied him for the twelfth time and issued an 18-month hold. He is housed at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County. He is now 71. His next interview falls in 2024.

“The worst possible decision I could have ever made.”

Mark David Chapman · 2022 Parole Board interview, describing the killing of John Lennon · twelfth denial, August 31, 2022

Chapman’s 2022 file presents the cleanest test case for the new statutory presumption. He has, at every interview for two decades, been described by the Board as remorseful, low-risk on forward-looking actuarial measures, and well-behaved in custody. Every denial has rested on the gravity of the original murder — on the offense severity that S.159’s sponsor memo concedes drives 90% of denials. Strip that criterion out and what remains is exactly the inmate the bill describes: older, lower-risk, expensive to keep. Yoko Ono filed a written statement opposing release at each prior interview. The new statute would render that statement legally insufficient, on its own, as a basis for the Board to keep him in.

Skeptics of this story will note that NY has not, in fact, paroled Berkowitz or Chapman. Twelve denials each is a record of restraint, not capitulation. That is true. It is also the reason the bills exist. The point of S.159 is to change the structure that has produced twelve denials. The coalition’s argument, openly stated in the sponsor justification memo, is that the Board has refused to release the inmates the coalition believes should be released. The bill removes the criterion under which the Board has been refusing.

There is precedent for the effect. On July 28, 2023, Robert Chambers — the “Preppy Killer” who pleaded guilty in 1988 to the manslaughter death of Jennifer Levin in Central Park and later returned to custody on a 15-year drug-and-assault sentence — walked out of Shawangunk Correctional Facilityat the end of that sentence. He had been denied parole repeatedly. He exited automatically because the sentence had run. The Berkowitz / Chapman precedent will be different in mechanism — not auto-release, but a re-engineered Board legally required to presume release — but identical in outcome for the families on the receiving end.

The structural precedent is the Less Is More Act, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) on September 17, 2021. That bill capped jail time for technical parole violations and is credited by its supporters with thousands of fewer reincarcerations. It is blamed by its opponents for a measurable rise in the share of parolees who, after committing new crimes, remained free pending trial — from 57% in 2021 to 85% in 2024, per follow-on AOL / NY Post reporting. The 2026 package extends the Less Is More logic from technical violations to the underlying sentences themselves.

The bills do not introduce themselves. Named legislators do. The political geography is worth fixing on the page, because the names appearing on these bills are not a random cross-section of the Senate Democratic conference. They cluster heavily in DSA-aligned Working Families Party districts in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Rochester — the same political bloc that elected NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani on an explicit decarceration platform.

Bill text means nothing without a floor vote and a signature. New York’s three relevant gatekeepers are Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers), and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx). Each has a documented record on this package.

Hochul signed the Less Is More Act in 2021 and signed an omnibus prison-reform package in 2025. The 2025 package was the coalition’s best chance to package the four bills into a single piece of legislation. Hochul specifically excluded Fair & Timely Parole (S.159) and Elder Parole (S.454) from the 2025 omnibus. The exclusion was deliberate. It signaled, to anyone reading the bill text rather than the press release, that Hochul is willing to sign the lesser parts of the agenda but not the two bills that go directly at the violent-offender pool. That position has held into 2026.

Stewart-Cousins has declined to bring S.159 to the Senate floor since 2022, despite having the votes. The bill has been reported out of committee, in some form, in three consecutive sessions. The majority leader controls floor scheduling. Her unwillingness to call the vote is the single largest reason the bill has not become law. The May 20, 2026 referral to Senate Finance is the closest the bill has come to a floor vote in four years.

Heastiecontrols the Assembly companion. The Assembly Democratic conference is, in floor-vote terms, more decarceration-friendly than the Senate — but Heastie has not moved the companion to floor action while the Senate version remains stalled. The strategic logic, on the gatekeeper side, is straightforward: neither chamber wants to be on the record voting to release Berkowitz and Chapman while the other chamber sits on its hands. The package needs both leaders moving in concert. As of May 23, 2026, neither has committed.

The opposition to the package is led, politically, by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R)— the leading 2026 GOP gubernatorial candidate — and by the city and state police unions. Blakeman has spent the first quarter of 2026 traveling the state on a single message: that Gov. Hochul has “fast-tracked the release of violent criminals.” The NY Post story dropping on May 23, with the $7M Soros figure attached, is the specific factual hook he has been waiting for.

On the union side, the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Associationand the city’s PBA have issued statements opposing the package; the Sergeants Association has flagged S.159 specifically as “the bill that ends meaningful parole accountability in this state.” The State Assembly Republican conference has filed a memo of opposition on each of the four bills, on the standard ground that mandatory minimums and offense-severity-based parole denial are the entire premise of New York’s sentencing regime, and that legislating around them by procedural presumption is functionally a sentence-reduction statute disguised as a parole-reform statute.