Rob Barton was perhaps a perfect candidate for parole. During his nearly 29 years of incarceration, he’s served as a mentor in the D.C. Jail’s Young Men Emerging program, he’s taken classes through Georgetown University, and he’s co-founded an organization and blog called More Than Our Crimes that spotlights the lives and perspectives of those held in federal prisons.

(Full disclosure: I work with the organization’s co-founder, Pam Bailey, to produce some of City Paper’s Inside Voices columns.)

Most importantly, though, on his third shot at parole, Barton presented his case to the U.S. Parole Commission that included a grid score of zero (the best possible score) and recommendation from a hearing examiner for release to a halfway house by September.

But last week, the commission ignored the hearing examiner’s recommendation and rejected his parole application.

According to Barton’s reading of the “action sheet” that explains the USPC’s decision, commissioners acknowledged that his score had decreased from his previous parole hearing from one to zero, indicating he met all of the requirements for release. But in rejecting the hearing examiner’s recommendation, according to Barton, commissioners focused on his use of another prisoner’s allotted minutes to make phone calls, which is against U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons’ rules.

“I just don’t understand,” Barton says. “You got people that’s not from where we’re from making these decisions.”

Barton’s confusion and deep frustration stems from the lack of local control over parole for people who have violated D.C. laws. With the feds calling the shots on who gets paroled and who doesn’t, attorneys and advocates have long complained that the outcomes are overly punitive and contradictory.

Under the current system, which was set up in 1998, the U.S. Parole Commission decides whether people locked up for D.C. code offenses can be released on parole. The commission also has jurisdiction over federal prisoners whose offenses occurred before Nov. 1, 1987 (Congress eliminated federal parole in 1984; and D.C. transitioned to a system known as “supervised release” in August of 2000), but as of 2020, 90 percent of USPC’s caseload was made up of people convicted of D.C. crimes. And unlike what’s left of the federal parole system, prisoners under D.C. parole cannot appeal the USPC’s parole decisions.

The USPC’s decision in Barton’s case (and others) has revived outrage from local advocates and attorneys who have pushed for D.C. to regain control of its parole system from the federal government.

“They are their own judge and jury,” says Robert Davis, who was released on parole in 2015 and served on a local committee that studied how D.C. could regain control from the feds. “There’s no appeals, it is what it is, and [commissioners] are only appointed by the president. C’mon man, just give us a regular parole board that has checks and balances—somebody who I can give a call to.”

Federal officials have been in favor of abolishing the USPC since at least 1987 when Congress transitioned to a new federal sentencing system. And in 2019, the current chair of the commission, Patricia Cushwa, wrote a letter calling for such action.

“It is seemingly inappropriate to have a federal agency with a national focus exerting control over local Washington, DC cases,” Cushwa wrote in the letter, advocating for the D.C. Superior Court and the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency to take over those responsibilities. She added that “this transfer should occur as soon as possible to leverage the USPC’s existing personnel who have an expertise in parole and supervised release.”

For a time, it looked as if D.C. might actually pull it off. But due to a combination of disinterest and disorganization from Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration, those efforts died last year.

In an emailed statement, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah says Bowser “remains supportive of retaking control of the Parole Board; however, the efforts were paused and remain so due to parties not reaching a majority opinion on how to structure the Board or its authorities, roles, and responsibilities.”

“It is beyond time that D.C. take back local control of parole,” says Stacey Litner, parole program and advocacy lead at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee. “We should have people from the community making these decisions. Over the last few years, it’s been increasingly difficult for individuals from D.C. with parole eligible sentences to get into programming that the parole commission expects in order to be granted parole. The barriers are increasing, and it’s time for D.C. to take this back.”

Davis, for his part, is left feeling as though the hours upon hours of work he and others donated to studying the issue and providing recommendations to the Bowser administration are wasted.

“We did this with the hope that we would be bettering the city,” he says. “The mayor just said, ‘Hey guys I’m gonna go ahead and give the parole commission and extension. Thank you for all your help.’ All our hard work, for nothing.”

Nathan Welch, who like Barton grew up in D.C. and has been incarcerated for nearly 30 years, was also recently denied release despite a recommendation for release from a USPC hearing examiner. In a phone interview, Welch says his grid score indicated that he should be paroled, and the hearing examiner recommended as much, with a proposed release date in July 2024. But the commission denied the recommendation and set his next parole hearing for 36 months out.

“It’s like some mental cruelty,” Welch says. “You get your hopes up that you’ll finally make it home after doing all this time in this crazy institution. And then two weeks later you get denied.”

Davis has had his own difficulties with the parole commission. He was released on parole in 2015, and was released from supervision altogether a few years later. But due to miscommunication from USPC, as NPR has reported, no one bothered to tell Davis or his parole officer.

Davis has also been vocal about the fact that he has been released on parole, but one of his co-defendants, Angelo Daniels, remains locked up. He says the commission rejected his co-defendant’s application and set his next parole eligibility date five years out. But the reason for commission’s denial is what rubs Davis the wrong way.

“They said the nature of the crime is the reason why. But it’s for the same crime! And get this here: They guy they’re hitting [with more prison time], he’s an accomplice. I am the primary.”

Barton says after he got the news that he had been denied, the first thing he did was return to his cell and cry. Then he had to call his mother. After the recommendation from the hearing examiner, he has previously told her he thought he would be coming home later this year.

“My mother’s been my everything this whole time. She’s done this time with me,” Barton says. “Now I think it’s more strenuous and stressful. She sees my friends at home, and it’s right there. And for me to have to keep telling her, ‘no,’ that was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.”