Three months after her son, Jared Bozydaj, was incarcerated for attempted murder, Deborah Bozydaj was diagnosed with breast cancer. As she struggled to make time to visit her son while undergoing chemotherapy, Deborah Bozydaj realized she needed help beyond the support of her family and friends. So she turned to a support group – the Prison Families of New York.
“I could let the doctors deal with the cancer,” Deborah Bozydaj said. “It was the prison that I needed help with.”
It was in that support group where Deborah Bozydaj, 58, found a passion, a calling for herself: prisoner’s rights.
At 3am on June 22, 2001, Jared Bozydaj fired his automatic rifle down the sleepy streets of New Paltz, NY, aiming specifically at cops. He injured Deputy Officer Jeffrey Queipo in the arm that morning, but was stopped and arrested before any casualties were made. Jared Bozydaj was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
Thinking of her son, the people in her support group, and the other 58,378 people that the New York State Department of Corrections lists as part of their inmate population, Deborah Bozydaj began taking action to reform laws for prisoner’s rights.
“Rather than reacting,” said Deborah Bozydaj, “it’s about healing to become proactive.”
She is now currently a board member of the Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE) in New York, a non-profit organization that works with lawmakers to promote reform of the prison system. She also co-founded her own legislation-writing grassroots organization called Citizens for Restorative Justice (CRJ).
Now, nearly ten years since Jared started shooting his assault rifle on Main Street, Bozydaj has beaten the cancer. Her main focus now is reforming merit time laws – so called “good time” – for life term prisoners.
As it stands, there is no merit time for prisoners sentenced to a life term – they have to serve at least their minimum sentencing before they can approach the parole board. Jared Bozydaj is serving a 20-to-life sentence at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess, NY.
The fight for an earlier chance at merit time is a difficult one. Deborah Bozydaj has been fighting for it for the last seven years now, but her attempts at changing legislation have been constantly rejected by legislators and committees.
Jared Bozydaj has been fighting for it, too. In February 2010, he sent packet of information detailing the economic values of offering merit time and early work release programs to violent offenders and life servers out to seven lawmakers, including New York State United Teachers president Richard Iannuzzi and Andrew Cuomo, then New York's Attorney General.
Only Iannuzzi wrote back saying he was thankful for the information and would look further into the issue.
But there have been successes, which Bozydaj sees as a glimmer of hope. In 2007, she had a hand in breaking telephone company MCI’s contract with New York State prisons, lowering the cost of telephone calls for inmates. According to Bozydaj, it used to cost $20 to $30 for a 30-minute phone call. Now it costs $1.61.
“You can’t fix everything,” said Bozydaj. “But you have to start somewhere.”
CRJ is also involved in fostering mediation programs between the prisoners, victims, and their families. According to Bozydaj, it’s an important step towards forgiveness and redemption – a part of the moving on process.
Deborah Bozydaj herself has yet to contact the Queipo family, but knows that the time is coming. She wants to wait first, until Jared Bozydaj’s first parole hearing in February, 2021. She hopes that, by then, time will create a sufficient space for healing, forgiveness, and redemption.
In the meantime, there’s a lot of waiting and working to be done until Jared Bozydaj’s parole hearing date. She gets calls from him twice a week and visits him twice a month.
Deborah Bozydaj says she will keep fighting for prisoner’s rights, but she’s realistic about the timeliness of its effects.
“If it doesn’t help me,” said Deborah Bozydaj, “maybe it’ll help someone down the road.”
This article is part of a multimedia report on the June 21, 2001 shooting in New Paltz by the Spring 2011 Feature Writing class at SUNY New Paltz.
