03/25/2025
Richard Rivera spent 39 years in prison for a crime he committed as a 16-year-old and deeply regrets.
While incarcerated, he completed a college education.
Now Rivera is paying it forward by working in Ithaca, N.Y., with unhoused people and individuals reentering society after serving time in prison.
Meanwhile, he strongly endorses the educational programs for the incarceration population like those that helped him become a productive and giving citizen after leaving a criminal justice system that ends many people’s chance of establishing a normal life once they’ve completed their sentence.
Rivera will discuss “How Prison Education Changed My Life and Shaped My Career after Incarceration: An Ex-Felon’s Story” on Tuesday, April 8, at SUNY Cortland.
His talk, which represents the university’s 17th Charles N. Poskanzer lecture, will take place from 11:40 a.m. to 12:55 p.m. in Sperry Center Vittor Lecture Hall (Room 105).
The annual lecture is supported by the Charles N. Poskanzer Fund, an endowment named in honor of the late SUNY Distinguished Service Professor emeritus who taught in the university’s Health Department for 40 years.
“Incarceration affects the physical, mental and emotional health of incarcerated persons, their families and communities, and is a public health crisis,” said lecture organizer Alexis Blavos, SUNY Cortland professor of health, citing a 2019 article in the National Academies Press.
The Prison Policy Initiative website contains the following data about incarceration in America:
- 1 in 3 people behind bars are being held in jail and have not been tried in court
- Nearly 2 million Americans are in local jails, state prisons or federal prisons and jails
On the justice.gov website notes that: - Today, over 70 million Americans have criminal records
- 95% of incarcerated people will eventually be released from prison
- Close to 70% will reoffend and end up back in prison (according to U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero)
One way to address that is to offer educational programming with college credit to incarcerated inmates.
In 1995, Rivera earned a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Syracuse University. In 2021, he followed that up by receiving a second Baccalaureate degree, this time in sociology, from Bard College.
Rivera was released on parole in 2019 after serving 39 years for firing a gun and killing a man during a botched, unplanned robbery in a Queens bar.
Soon after, Rivera began coordinating programs for the Endeavor House, residential housing for formerly incarcerated men in Ithaca. In 2020 he became reentry housing taskforce coordinator with Ultimate Re-Entry Opportunities, working with those impacted by incarceration and policy makers to effect structural change.
Also starting in 2020, he has been the outreach navigation coordinator for the nonprofit Opportunity, Alternatives and Resources (O.A.R.), which protects the civil liberties of those incarcerated in the Tompkins County Jail. In 2021 he spoke at the UNIS-UN Conference 2021, a United Nations International School event focused on “Pandemics and Carceral Environments.”
He was appointed in 2022 as associate director of academic reentry service for the Cornell Prison Education Program. That year, he served as a panelist at Yale University’s 2022 Imagination and Incarceration Symposium.
Since 2024, Rivera has served as assistant to the executive director for special initiatives in the Center for Community Alternatives in Ithaca, N.Y.
Rivera co-founded and created the Sunflower Housing and Supportive Services of Tompkins County.
He has been a special consult to the Freedom Reads project, which establishes libraries in prisons. Rivera has been a researcher with the Tompkins County Reimagining Public Safety Collaborative, and is a member of the Working Group Reimaging Public Safety Collaborative Tompkins County. He advises the Reimaging Policing Internal Resource Group of Tompkins County, parole preparation at Cornell University, the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) Alumni Advisory Council and the Community Foundation of Tompkins County.
He is the author of two articles, one on “I Survived Prison During the AIDS Epidemic. Here’s What It Taught Me About Coronavirus” for The Marshall Project, a nonprofit online journalism organization; and another on “Traumatized to Death: The Cumulative Effects of Serial Parole Denials,” for the CUNY Law Review.
A certified peer counselor, he is an HIV/AIDS counselor and trainer who can interpret and translate Spanish.
April is Second Chance Month to recognize the importance of helping individuals, communities, and agencies across the country appreciate their role in supporting the safe and successful reentry of millions of people returning from incarceration each year. The federal Second Chance Act, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2008 and reauthorized in 2018, has paved the way for groundbreaking nationwide initiatives aimed at rebuilding lives and strengthening communities.
The Poskanzer fund was established through the Cortland College Foundation as an endowment to support an annual public lecture offered by the university’s Health Department in honor of its former colleague. The presentation brings national leaders in public and community health to campus to meet with students and faculty and to deliver a public lecture on a current public health issue.
The lecture is also supported by the Health Department and the Provost’s Office.