The Coalition for Parole Restoration (CPR) was started in New York by families of persons in prison, friends of persons in prison, formerly incarcerated persons, prisoner’s rights attorneys and community activists.  Under Governor Pataki, the number of persons in prison who had been convicted of violent felony offenses increased because of the policy he adopted to keep people in prison longer.  People in prison and their families were becoming increasingly frustrated as they watched parole being denied to thousands of individuals who had clearly earned the right to be paroled because they had served their time in prison and had been rehabilitated.  

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After a prisoner’s rights attorney attended the Annual Roundtable for Women in Prison in California in 1999, she called a meeting to discuss issues affecting people in New York State prisons.  The meeting was held at the offices of the Prisoners’ Rights Project (PRP) of the Legal Society in New York City and was attended by attorneys working at PRP and the appeals unit at Legal Aid.  At the meeting, one PRP attorney stated “if we want to do something to help people in prison, we need to do something about people being denied parole.  All persons in attendance agreed and decided to call a meeting specifically to discuss what could be done about parole denials in New York state..  Although only about twenty people from various organizations were invited to the meeting, letters were also sent to a few individuals in prison that had written to PRP about the parole denials to inform them about the upcoming meeting.

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Through the prison grapevine that was probably one of the fastest ways to spread word before the internet, word spread that a meeting was being held to address the issue of parole denials.   Weeks before the meeting, Legal Aid began receiving phone calls about the meeting from relatives of people in prison that had been told by them that it was imperative they attend the meeting.  Although it quickly became clear that more than twenty people would be attending the people, we were still unprepared for the approximately 300 people that showed up at the Legal Aid Society at 90 Church Street in Manhattan on November 8, 1999.  Since there was not enough space in the largest conference room to accommodate the crowd, the overflow was sent upstairs to participate by video conference. The group included spouses, children, parents, grandparents and friends of people in prison, formerly incarcerated persons, attorneys that had represented or were representing persons denied parole and even a former parole commissioner.  These people stood up at the meeting and testified about the frustration they faced when their loved ones was denied parole over and over again.  Many of these people met all of the criteria listed in the parole statute that should have qualified them for release and had outstanding institutional records.   CPR was formed at that meeting.

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The mission of the organization was to organize families and friends of prisoners so that they could advocate for fair parole practices as well as to educate the community about the effect these practices were having on families and communities.  This was particularly important in 1999 when we started because people in prison, frustrated over being denied parole over and over, were organizing a Y2K protest for January 1, 2000.  Since prison protests are illegal and it was anticipated that many individuals would be disciplined, we wanted to give people in prison hope that the issue of unfair parole denials were being addressed by their families on the outside to discourage them from engaging in an illegal protest.  Our goal was successful because the establishment of CPR discouraged most people in prison from participating in the protest.