RAPP Campaign
Release Aging People in Prison Campaign
Holden Draper, Hoodline — As the legislative session wound down in Albany, lawmakers quietly signed off on a bill that could change the first days of freedom for thousands of New Yorkers leaving jails and prisons. The measure aims to plug a deadly gap in health care coverage the moment someone walks out the gate, a move that reentry advocates are cheering even as their push for broader parole reforms hit a wall...
Noah Powelson / Queens Daily Eagle — With a little over a month until lawmakers return to Albany, lawmakers and advocates reignited a multi-year long effort to reform the parole process for elderly incarcerated individuals...
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...
Anthony Dixon / Queens Daily Eagle — No one should be judged unworthy of freedom by those who’ve never had to earn it back. Recently, the New York City Council passed Resolution 414-A, with a majority of Queens Councilmembers voting aye, backing a bill introduced by Senator Cordell Cleare requiring the Governor and State Legislature to appoint at least one formerly incarcerated person to the New York State Board of Parole . Though the Council lacks appointment power, its message was unmistakable: those most impacted by incarceration must help shape the system that determines freedom...
Anthony Dixon / Queens Daily Eagle — No one should be judged unworthy of freedom by those who’ve never had to earn it back. Recently, the New York City Council passed Resolution 414-A, with a majority of Queens Councilmembers voting aye, backing a bill introduced by Senator Cordell Cleare requiring the Governor and State Legislature to appoint at least one formerly incarcerated person to the New York State Board of Parole . Though the Council lacks appointment power, its message was unmistakable: those most impacted by incarceration must help shape the system that determines freedom...
Jacob Kaye / Queens Daily Eagle — As the illegal strike by New York State prison guards entered its ninth day on Tuesday, Governor Kathy Hochul said enough was enough. The officers who had illegally walked off of their jobs in New York’s prisons over a week ago had yet to negotiate their return in good faith and were putting “the entire state at risk” by going AWOL, Hochul said...
Kelsie Radziski / LI Herald — A rally was held in Hempstead on Dec. 4 to push for the passage of two bills statewide that would help imprisoned individuals seek justice through the parole system...
David Long: Queens Daily Eagle — Many longtime New Yorkers talk about surviving the bad old days of our city as a badge of honor, but no one wants to go back to that era. At the same time, there’s broad consensus that many of the policies relating to law enforcement and sentencing from the 80’s and 90’s need to be reevaluated because they were at times wrong, costly, and even ineffective...
Jacob Kaye, Queens Daily Eagle: According to data from the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign, around 18 percent of all Queens residents serving their sentences in New York State prisons are 55 years or older. Many, according to advocates, were given multi-decade sentences at a young age and despite changing their lives while incarcerated, have found it difficult to petition for their release....
By: Jacob Kaye, Queens Daily Eagle - "With just several weeks left before the end of the state’s legislative session, hundreds of criminal justice reform advocates rallied in Albany in support of two bills that would alter the state’s parole process for elderly incarcerated individuals...."
By: Jacob Kaye, Queens Daily Eagle: Last year, Robert Webster was sitting in prison, facing the prospect of serving two more decades of his 50 year to life sentence. The Queens man had already served 34 years of that sentence, which he was given when he was 17 years old.
By: Jacob Kaye, Queens Daily Eagle
