The Release Aging People in Prison/RAPP Campaign is a grassroots advocacy organization created and led by formerly incarcerated people, family members of people in prison, and advocates. We work to end mass incarceration and promote racial justice through the release of aging people in prison and those serving long sentences. We work to dismantle the racist policies of mass incarceration by expanding the use of parole, compassionate release, clemency, and other forms of release in New York State.

We also collaborate with other organizations across the country to end life imprisonment in the United States. By organizing community power to free incarcerated elders, we work to uproot a system of endless punishment that fuels mass incarceration and damages Black and other communities of color.

RAPP was founded in 2013 by three formerly incarcerated people who collectively served 70 years in state and federal prison, along with a civil rights attorney who had long represented political prisoners and other incarcerated elders. They shared and understood the all-too-common experience of growing older—and watching others grow older—in prison as a result of long prison sentences and few opportunities for release. Our work began with the purpose of not just releasing older people from prison, but also ensuring that people serving long sentences for violent crimes were included in any movement for criminal legal system reform and prison abolition. We saw an all-inclusive movement to end mass incarceration as critical to uprooting the racism and perpetual punishment baked into U.S. prisons and jails and society as a whole. 

Since our founding, we’ve helped to lead several successful campaigns to change the regulations and personnel associated with the New York State Parole Board as a means of promoting the release of more people from prison. At the time of our founding, the population of older people in New York State prisons exceeded more than 10,000, and while the overall prison population in the state had fallen by 23% since 2000, the population of older people serving long sentences had doubled. Today, partly as a result of our work, there are just under 8,300 incarcerated older New Yorkers in prison. While we’ve made great strides since our founding, we still have a long way to go before all New Yorkers have a real opportunity for freedom and justice. 

When RAPP launched in 2013, we organized incarcerated people, their families, community members, and organizations to change the NYS Parole Board’s regulations so that parole release decisions were based on who incarcerated people are today. RAPP sourced hundreds of official public comments from currently and formerly incarcerated people and community organizations in support of this initiative; met repeatedly with government stakeholders; and organized community events and media coverage. As a result, the Parole Board changed their regulations twice—in 2014 and 2017—ultimately codifying that parole decisions be guided by “risk and needs principles,” based on who parole applicants are today.

We coupled structural change efforts with cultural ones, demanding a change in the Parole Board’s Commissioners, who determine the Board’s release decisions. Historically, commissioners were white people from rural New York with law enforcement backgrounds. Through public education; research; media work; rallies and press conferences; and meetings with key stakeholders, we advocated for Gov. Cuomo to not reappoint five of the Board’s most punitive commissioners to another 6-year term and to instead appoint new commissioners with diversified professional backgrounds and identities. In June 2017, five of the Board’s worst commissioners retired or were not reappointed, and the governor appointed six new commissioners—the first cohort whose professional experience did not include policing or prosecution. 

As a result of these changes to the Board’s regulations and personnel, parole release rates have risen from around 20-25% to 40-45%. For the first time since 2000, the number of elders in NYS prisons fell. It was a first step.

Beginning in 2018, when Democrats gained control of the state legislature, we began to advocate for structural changes to the laws governing parole release.  We continue this advocacy as part of a large statewide coalition, the People’s Campaign for Parole Justice.

For more, please see “Current Campaigns.”

From our inception, we have worked most closely with the Parole Preparation Project. Together we have made changes and done work to release hundreds of older incarcerated New Yorkers, and together we continue to lead the work of the People’s Campaign for Parole Justice.