Last month, Greg Mingo, a formerly incarcerated activist, was enlisted to advocate for Morris Grady, who, at age 71, was serving a sentence in Ulster County’s Eastern Correctional Facility. He immediately agreed to pen a letter, but Grady died a day later. “[His wife] asked me Thursday, and he passed away Friday,” recalled Mingo.
COVID-19 renewed public attention on incarcerated elders, given the pandemic’s disproportionate risk for seniors and the underreported spread in New York State prisons. Advocates pointed to such conditions when they successfully pushed then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2021 to grant clemency to Mingo, who is now 73. The Harlemite long maintained his innocence while serving out what criminal justice reformers call “death by incarceration.”
“When COVID came into the system itself, we were locked down,” said Mingo. “They kept you in the cell. If somebody came down with COVID or went to the clinic and they suspected that it might be COVID, they would put them in a cell and isolate them. They didn’t have their property access to nothing and then trying to get a shower [or] anything [else] was bad.
“So people didn’t report that they were sick because they knew what was waiting for them. They figured they could handle it and stay in the cell. And as a result, COVID was so easy to spread inside prison.”
Yet the average age in state prison remains on the rise just a few years after the pandemic’s peak, found State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a report published last month. All while the total incarcerated population steadily dips. From 2006 to 2025, the state prison population for people between the ages 30-49 plummeted from 34,565 to 18,454. Within the same time frame, the state prison population for people ages 60+ grew from 1,698 to 2,836.
“The share of older people in New York’s prisons has grown over time,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “We need careful evaluation of policies related to sentencing, parole, compassionate release, geriatric and health costs, and reentry support for this older population to determine an approach that ensures public safety and protects taxpayers, while reducing incarceration where warranted.”
His findings included how the state releases older incarcerated individuals at lower rates than the total population, despite nominal felony recidivism rates among returning citizens over the age of 60 (the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision considers anyone ages 55+ as an “older adult” due to accelerated aging from incarceration).
Additionally, the state resumed locking up people ages 50 and older for “new court commitments” like recent felony convictions at increased rates after a brief but substantial decrease in 2020. In the past, parole violations contributed to a significant portion for why elders entered the prison system, but they now only make up 12% of prison admissions for the age cohort based on the most recent data from 2023.
An aging state prison population also means a sizable healthcare bill fronted by taxpayer money. The report found per-person health service costs for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision rose from $5,850 in State Fiscal Year 2013 to $13,923 in State Fiscal Year 2025, and $450.6 million in total healthcare costs. However, the state does not report spending by age group.
Mingo, now a Westchester community leader for the Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) campaign, finds the report unsurprising. He points to the draconian arrest and sentencing practices from decades ago, which famously exacerbated mass incarceration in the state and across the country. Today, judges often sentence defendants less harshly for similar convictions than their predecessors (or at times, themselves) previously threw the book on.
Recent reforms like Raise the Age and the decriminalization of cannabis help prevent repeating those past mistakes. But few levers exist to undo the existing harms of the Crime Bill era thanks to narrow judicial review standards and a flawed parole system. As a result, many incarcerated elders remain in prison for longer than they would if a court sentenced them today, with little recourse beyond clemency.
Before his commutation, Mingo was not parole eligible until 2031 despite entering the prison system back in 1981. Grady was more than a decade and a half away from parole eligibility, reported the appeal back in 2023. But even those who get a hearing are not guaranteed an early release. The parole board’s rate of releasing incarcerated elders also dipped from 57.2% in 2019 to 48.9% in 2024, according to DiNapoli’s report.
Additionally, racial disparities persist during such hearings. An NYU Law report found white people were released at much higher rates than nonwhite people through parole in recent years. Other existing levers include medical parole and compassionate release, but require serious (and often terminal) health conditions.
Roslyn “Roz” Smith — another RAPP community leader and the Beyond Incarceration program manager for the global feminist movement V-Day — says thinking about post-prison life fosters rehabilitation. She recalled entering the system at age 17 before spending 39 years incarcerated. Oftentimes, she felt like a statistic as a young Black woman.
“When somebody can go to the parole board, somebody can apply for clemency — it’s hope,” said Smith. “When I was inside, I applied for clemency several times, and that gave me hope, even though I didn’t get it. It creates hope and motivation inside, and it allows people to see something in the future…it’s like I’m striving for something. I’m not being dormant, and I’m not sitting in prison rotting away without any hope for release.”
The report mentions several measures proposed to address the aging state prison population, including the RAPP-backed Elder and Fair and Timely Parole bills. They would grant parole eligibility to incarcerated individuals ages 55 and older after serving 15 or more years in prison and increase the odds for those who see a parole board to actually get released. The legislation received public support from Rev. Al Sharpton and the NAACP, as well as Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark and former New York State Parole Commissioner Barbara Hanson Treen.
While those bills navigate the state legislature, executive clemency powers remain the most immediate solution. After all, prison deaths do not follow a legislative calendar. Commutations do not necessitate release — they can also make someone parole eligible earlier or reduce a sentence.
For Mingo, clemency meant not only returning home but making the most of his freedom. Now five years in, he remains active helping those still on the inside.
“I hit the ground running when I came home in terms of advocacy work because when you are in prison and you find out that you’re getting ready to get released — particularly after all this time, talking about four decades — you have in your head, ‘what am I gonna do?’” said Mingo. “What helped me answer that question was five days before I was getting ready to come home, I knew this ‘young’ gentleman. He came in when he was 16 years old and…had been inside for 45 years. I got him back active, and he’s trying to work on his case, and I even got him a job back in the law library with me.
“I left him that afternoon. I went to the yard, I came back about two hours later, and I said something to him. He didn’t answer. So I figured he’s taking a nap, but actually, he was in a cell, dead. The effects became personal, and that helped me answer the question about what I’m gonna do with the rest of my life. Because you can’t spend that much time inside and not be affected by it.”
The Second Look Act, now up for consideration in the NY Legislature, is another lever that could afford men and women the opportunity for a reevaluation of their sentencing given time served. NY needs all the tools we can get to bring our elders home.