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PREP strives to achieve prison reform for all people. We work with the Ithaca community to help incarcerated people in our community. We also aim to educate the general Cornell population about the criminal justice systems and ways the can get involved.
PREP is organized around two pillars: education and advocacy. We strive to raise awareness on campus about issues relating to mass incarceration and criminal justice through biweekly discussions, public speaking events, and educational campaigns. We also lead and support direct actions around prison reform efforts in the immediate community and in the New York State legislature. To learn more about our projects this semester, click here.
To humanize the American experience of incarceration and reentry.
To put an end to the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) that has dramatically increased the number of U.S. prisoners, broken families, and shattered communities; and which has limited historically marginalized peoples’ access to adequate housing and education, cost taxpayers millions, and simultaneously failed to keep us safe. To do this, we seek to stop the expansion of correctional facilities by forcing empirical discussion about America’s broken system and advocating for the improvement of conditions in already existing prisons.
To humanize the American experience of incarceration and reentry.
To put an end to the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) that has dramatically increased the number of U.S. prisoners, broken families, and shattered communities; and which has limited historically marginalized peoples’ access to adequate housing and education, cost taxpayers millions, and simultaneously failed to keep us safe. To do this, we seek to stop the expansion of correctional facilities by forcing empirical discussion about America’s broken system and advocating for the improvement of conditions in already existing prisons.
In Spring 2023, PREP hosted its first ever Day at Cornell. Day at Cornell is a multi-day event in which our organization hosts justice-impacted youth to explore what Cornell has to offer. For this event, we partner with S.T.R.O.N.G Youth, an organization focused on empowering justice-impacted youth, and providing them with creative and educational opportunities.
Day at Cornell aims to provide youth with the opportunity to experience what it means to pursue higher-education and career-planning. As a part of this initiative, we have a number of guest lecturers, seminars, alumni Q&As, Cornell student shadowing, tours, professional exploration, and fun campus activities.
Day at Cornell Spring 2023 was an enormous success, and we hope to be able to host a greater number of STRONG youth this year.