UN Human Rights Committee Calls for Moratorium on Life Without Parole in U.S.
November 3, 2023: Groups fighting Death By Incarceration traveled to Geneva to brief committee for its review of U.S. compliance with human rights treaty
UN Special Rapporteurs criticize U.S. death-by-incarceration sentences
October 17, 2023: RAPP members join delegation to United Nations, Geneva Switzerland • testify on racial discrimination in prison sentencing
DEATH BY INCARCERATION IS TORTURE: The Cruelty of Life Imprisonment in the United States
September 12, 2023: "Isn’t part of the human experience learning from mistakes and becoming better? . . . We transgress, we’re held accountable, we transform, and then we make amends. Death by incarceration strips people of this experience..."
The Problem with Parole: New York State’s Failing System of Release
June 2023: Center on Race, Inequality, & the Law - "The legislature should pass a provision that grants all people aged 55 or older, who have served 15 years or more in prison, immediate parole consideration, regardless of crime or sentence. Roughly 1,000 people are serving life without the possibility of parole or virtual life sentences. ... ¶ It is appalling that despite the repeated documentation of the vast racial disparities in decisions by New York State’s Parole Board, those disparities have continued and worsened, while New York policymakers have failed to address the issue."
Racial disparities in NYC parole releases are widening, NYU study finds
By: Graham Rayman, New York Daily News - During the first four months of 2023, the state Parole Board released 45% of white prisoners who appeared before it, compared to 32.4% of all people of color who had hearings, researchers at NYU Law’s Center on Race, Inequality and the Law and the Vera Institute found...
N.Y. needs criminal justice reform: We must put compassion in parole decisions
By: Carol Shapiro, New York Daily News - People often think mass incarceration is the result of a few laws — the federal 1994 crime bill or state-level Rockefeller Drug laws, for example — but in reality it’s driven by everyday decisions, small and large, made by actors across the justice system, including some you’ve probably never heard of...
The Problem With Parole: New York State’s Failing System of Release
June 2021: NYU Center on Race, Inequality and the Law and Parole Preparation Project
A Second Look at Injustice
May 12, 2021: Nazgol Ghandnoosh, PhD, The Sentencing Project