RAPP Campaign
Release Aging People in Prison Campaign
Steve Zeidman, NY Daily News — Stanley Richards, New York City’s newly appointed Department of Correction commissioner, testified at a recent City Council hearing that Rikers Island was under acute strain and badly in need of an overhaul. In addition to the decaying physical structure, Richards highlighted a decrease in correction officer staffing levels such that people inside do not feel safe...
Reuven Blau / The City — A coalition of more than 50 advocacy organizations is urging New York lawmakers to scrutinize the state’s prison system, pressing for answers about alleged brutality, deaths behind bars and violations of solitary confinement reforms as the legislature weighs more than $4 billion in funding...
Nexstar Media, Inc. — ALBANY, N.Y. (NEXSTAR) — Criminal justice advocates rallied at the state Capitol Thursday, accusing Governor Kathy Hochul of hypocrisy for demanding federal accountability while ignoring deaths in New York state prisons. While they demonstrated outside her office, Daniel Martuscello III, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, testified down the hall before the legislature at a budget hearing on public protection...
New York Times / Wesley Parnell — Women hoping to visit their loved ones at New York prisons are being turned away after scanners pick up what they say are menstrual products. Some have had their visitation rights suspended...
NY Focus / Chris Gelardi — When it comes to criminal justice, the story of this year’s State of the State address is just as much about what Governor Kathy Hochul didn’t mention as what she did...
Johan Sheridan / News 10 — Governor Kathy Hochul of New York granted clemency to 13 individuals, reducing the prison sentences of two men and pardoning 11 others. The governor has granted 120 clemencies since taking office in 2021, but advocates say this is too slow to address the backlog of almost 1,800 pending applications and rising death toll inside state prisons. The commutations and pardons were given to people who have demonstrated remorse, rehabilitation, and improvement in themselves and their communities...
Reuven Blau / The City — Some of the most powerful actors in New York’s criminal justice system — district attorneys, prison superintendents and even the judges who imposed the original sentences — have urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to grant clemency to people serving decades behind bars. Until this week, she hadn’t freed a single one...
Dan Clark / Times Union — (ALBANY) After striking a deal this month with Gov. Kathy Hochul on the most significant package of prison oversight legislation in years, Democrats in the state Legislature say they’re not done with the New York corrections system...
Fernando Martínez / El Diario — Una coalición de organizaciones, que promueven reformas profundas al sistema penitenciario de Nueva York, protestaron este martes, a las puertas de la oficina de la gobernadora Kathy Hochul, en Manhattan. Familiares y activistas denuncian, que en lo que va de 2025, la mandataria estatal, no ha otorgado ningún perdón o conmutación de penas a personas en prisiones del estado...
Jacob Kaye / Queens Daily Eagle — Tami Eldridge, a 51-year-old woman from Queens, has spent the past 25 years in a New York State prison...
Nick Reisman / Politico — CLEMENCY PLEA: Left-leaning advocates are pressuring Hochul to use her clemency powers amid a backlog of 1,600 applications...
Kate Lisa / Spectrum News 1 — State lawmakers said sentencing reform will be a top priority in the final weeks of session as a deal to expand earned time credits for incarcerated New Yorkers fell out of the final budget...
