RAPP Campaign

Release Aging People in Prison Campaign

fair and timely parole act

Parole reform inches closer as proponents push lawmakers

Tandy Lau, Amsterdam News — Legislation supporting parole reform in New York State is gaining momentum, signaling good news for advocates who are seeking to reduce deaths through releasing incarcerated people before their maximum sentence if they can demonstrate their rehabilitation. As the Amsterdam News reported recently, 2026 marks the deadliest start in Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) facilities in the past six years and how some advocates are fighting to ensure recent oversight laws are enacted....

Read moreParole reform inches closer as proponents push lawmakers

Invest in what truly works to improve community safety

Samra Brouk / Rochester Beacon — Currently, our prison system focuses only on punishment without considering its long-term consequences. Instead, we need to find ways to enable incarcerated people to grow and change. As chair of the Senate Mental Health Committee, I recognize that when we help individuals heal, we make our communities safer places to live...

Read moreInvest in what truly works to improve community safety

NY lawmakers must address the real prison crisis: rampant brutality

Victor Pate / Syracuse.come — Correction officers brutally beat Robert Brooks to death on video camera. Less than three months later, officers beat 22-year-old Messiah Nantwi to death. This nonchalant brutality takes place daily in prisons across the state. For decades, officers have beaten and killed people, especially Black people, in New York’s prisons — including Leonard Strickland, Samuel Harrell, Karl Taylor, Terry Cooper, John McMillon and countless others — and yet the racist system of brutality continues unabated...

Read moreNY lawmakers must address the real prison crisis: rampant brutality

Parole release racial gap widens under Hochul, says NYU report

Tandy Lau / NY Amsterdam News — Last fall, NYU School of Law’s Center on Race Inequity and the Law released findings on how the state parole board was significantly more likely to deny non-white people their release, particularly under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration between the beginning of 2022 and June 2024. The report’s updated version, which includes numbers all the way until Sept. 2024, was provided to the Amsterdam News...

Read moreParole release racial gap widens under Hochul, says NYU report