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 — 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...
Noah Powelson / Brooklyn Daily Eagle — A week after Governor Kathy Hochul enacted her first round of clemencies this year, 135 organizations co-signed and published a letter to state leaders demanding more be done to address “the urgent crisis of racist brutality, medical neglect and denial of basic dignity in New York State prisons.” ...
Steve Zeidman / New York Times — President Trump is making shameless use of his constitutional clemency power, rewarding insurrectionists, cronies, campaign contributors and sundry others. But this is not the only problem. Mr. Trump’s acts of commission are paralleled by American governors’ acts of omission. Even though they control the bulk of the country’s prison population and typically have the power to grant clemency, many governors have consistently failed to exercise the power of forgiveness, to all of our detriment...
Sarah Kliff / New York Times — When the letter arrived at Westil Gonzalez’s prison cell saying that he had been granted parole, he couldn’t read it. Over the 33 years he had been locked up for murder, multiple sclerosis had taken much of his vision and left him reliant on a wheelchair...
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...
By: Samantha Max, Gothamist: Gov. Kathy Hochul pardoned nine people and commuted the sentences of four others on Wednesday — a year after she last granted several New Yorkers clemency — and pledged to continue to do so “on an ongoing basis," despite having not done so for a year.
By: David Slattery, NY Daily News ALBANY — Proponents of a pair of bills that would overhaul the state’s parole system renewed their push for change Wednesday as lawmakers held …
November 16, 2022: Jacob Kaye, Queens Daily Eagle
