Rapp Campaign Statement On Final Week Of Legislative Session
Estimated 75 People Dead in NY Prisons Since Guards’ Murder of Robert Brooks; Legislature Has Done Nothing to Address this Crisis
(New York) – Today, exactly six months after staff at Marcy Prison murdered Robert Brooks on video, Jose Saldaña, Director of the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign (RAPP) and a survivor of 38 years in New York State prisons, released the following statement as the 2025 New York State Legislative Session nears its end:
“After the brutal murder of Robert Brooks by 154 prison guards and sergeants at Marcy prison, everyone from the Governor to the prison commissioner to state lawmakers promised sweeping reforms. Yet in the six months since that horrific day, conditions in prisons have only gotten more punitive, pro grams are routinely cancelled because guards prefer to stand around, family visits are delayed, if they’re available at all, and roughly 75 people have died in prison. Meanwhile, the Legislature has done absolutely nothing to address this crisis. Civil rights leaders, crime survivor advocates, district attorneys, and pub lic defenders alike, along with a majority of state legislators, all support the Fair & Timely Parole and Elder Parole bills because they are common sense solutions that promote hope by ensuring the parole system values safety and personal transformation above vengeance and perpetual punishment. Legislators have little time left to act. It would be unconscionable for them to leave without passing these and other critical bills pushed by the BPHA Caucus in their Robert Brooks Blueprint for Justice and Reform.”
BACKGROUND:
An estimated 75 people died in NY prisons since Robert Brooks was murdered. (59 people died in NY prisons from Jan. 1, 2025 to June 1, 2025. In the month before this period, 17 people died, including Mr. Brooks.)
The average age of death in state prisons is only 56.
The People’s Campaign for Parole Justice is calling on law makers in Albany to pass two bills that, together, will ensure that people in prison have meaningful opportunities for individualized consideration for parole release based on who they are today, what they have done to change, and whether they pose a risk if released:
Fair and Timely Parole (S.159/A.127) restores the Parole Board to its original purpose of evaluating people’s readiness for release, rather than denying people based solely or primarily on their conviction, while pre serving the Board’s discretion to make individualized determinations. In other words, it would provide more rigorous parole reviews for incarcerated people who are already parole-eligible.
Elder Parole (S.454/A.514) provides for parole release con sideration, on a case-by-case basis, for people classified by DOCCS as older adults who have served at least 15 years.
More than a dozen of the state’s leading crime victim & survivor advocates and anti violence advocates are calling for passage of the Elder Parole and Fair & Timely Parole bills, including the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, and more.
These bills are also backed by public defense organizations and District Attorneys alike, as well as at least two former New York State Parole Commissioners, along with the Rev. Al Sharpton, the NAACP, several U.S. Congressmembers 1199 SEIU, HTC, RWDSU, LiveOn NY, JASA, and many others.
According to a recent report by NYU Law School’s Center on Race, Inequality & the Law, racial disparities in parole release decisions under Governor Kathy Hochul are the highest on record. The report finds there would have been 4,152 more grants of release to people of color if their release rates matched those of white people since 2016, including 1,338 just since Gov. Hochul took office.
A report by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli about the unsustainable rise in the population of older adults in prison calls for expanding pathways to release.
The Center for Justice at Columbia University has estimat ed that enacting both bills would save $522 million annually.