Two groups that advocate on behalf of prisoners issued a report Tuesday charging that the New York State Parole Board is seriously understaffed. It also asserted that two of the board's commissioners are biased against inmates who've committed violent crimes.

Currently, 12 Parole Board commissioners conduct about 12,000 hearings per year. Often, only two commissioners attend the hearings, according to the report, a practice that was supposed to end as of August of last year. Two-person parole panels are considered problematic because if there's a split decision, the inmate must return to prison until the tie can be broken.

"So they have to go again before a new panel next month and relive probably the worst moment of their life," said David George, associate director of Release Aging People in Prison, which released the report along with the Parole Preparation Project.

George said that inmates regularly get denied parole if they have committed violent crimes, even when they have met four other criteria (are considered a low public-safety risk; complete rehabilitation programs' accept responsibility for their actions; and can return to a stable home).

The report calls out two commissioners, W. William Smith and Marc Coppola, for being biased and at times unprepared for hearings; it also says Smith has given more than $16,000 in campaign contributions to state Sen. Patrick Gallivan, raising a conflict of interest. Gallivan chairs the State Senate's Crime and Correction Committee, which must approve any Parole Board nominees. 

George said that on the day Smith was reappointed, his most adamant supporter was Gallivan. 

Gallivan said the contributions had no influence on him. He said he would hold hearings this September and examine the release rates of the different commissioners. 

"Those are the things that I'm going to be looking at in the fall," he said. 

Smith and Coppola declined to comment, but state Department of Corrections spokesman Patrick Bailey said, "The Board of Parole wholeheartedly disagrees with many of the false accusations in this report."

Jose Saldana said his experience confirmed what was in the report. He was convicted of attempted murder against a police sergeant. He spent 38 years in prison, and said none of his first four parole hearings lasted more than eight minutes. Also, he said none of the commissioners asked him about the therapeutic anti-violence programs at the prison he created with other inmates, which he thought should count in his favor. 

"I would try to direct their attention to it and they would just say 'Okay, you have some certificates here,'" Saldana said. "They reduced what we had done over years and decades to a bunch of certificates."

Saldana received parole after his fifth hearing. He now advocates for the release of inmates who've grown old, sick and fragile in prison. According to the report, 20 percent of New York's prison population is older than 50.  

The report acknowledges that the number of people granted parole has recently increased, but groups say the process is still inefficient and unfair. They want Gov. Andrew Cuomo to appoint seven new commissioners to bring the board's membership up to 19, the maximum the law allows. 

“The law allows for, but does not mandate, up to 19 members on the parole board, and each member requires [state] Senate confirmation," said Cuomo spokesman Tyrone Stevens. "The board has maintained levels consistent with prior administrations, and while we certainly remain open to filling more vacancies, the Republican Senate must agree to consider additional nominations.”