NY Gov. Kathy Hochul to Sign Prison Reform Bill After Beatings and Deaths

Prison guards have been accused of more than 120 acts of brutality that amounted to torture in the past decade in New York, a Times investigation found.

A year after a video of a deadly prison beating by corrections officers came to light, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York announced on Friday that she would sign into law a range of new reforms meant to expand oversight of guards’ behavior and make the prisons safer.

Ms. Hochul’s approval comes during a tumultuous period for the state’s prison system, which is understaffed and was hobbled by weeks of rolling wildcat strikes earlier this year. Amid the unrest, Ms. Hochul decided to activate 7,000 National Guard members, inflaming anger among some lawmakers and corrections officers who regularly appeared in Albany for protests.

“Our work is never done, and I will not stop working to ensure our correctional facilities are safe for all,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement, adding that more reforms are necessary because everyone “deserves to be safe, whether they are employed there or serving their time.”

Momentum for these reforms began to build last December after the state released footage of corrections officers viciously beating to death a handcuffed prisoner, Robert L. Brooks, at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica. Mr. Brooks’s death infuriated Ms. Hochul, who called for the corrections officers and a nurse involved to be fired. Ten officers were charged in connection to his death, including six with murder. Ms. Hochul applauded the indictments.

Three months later, another prisoner, Messiah Nantwi, who was in a facility across the road from where Mr. Brooks was fatally beaten, was brutally attacked by guards and died. Ten officers were charged in his death, including two with murder.

A recent investigation in The New York Times found that in the past decade, prison guards have been accused of more than 120 acts of brutality that amounted to torture — including punching, kicking and stomping on inmates or even waterboarding them — all while they were handcuffed or otherwise restrained.

The circumstances of many of the attacks resembled those that preceded the deadly beatings of Mr. Brooks and Mr. Nantwi.

Mr. Brooks’s father, Robert Ricks, became a vocal proponent for reform, regularly appearing in Albany and at events around the state calling for these measures to be passed. On Friday, Ms. Hochul called Mr. Ricks to tell him that she intended to sign the bill.

The legislative package, which Ms. Hochul agreed to with some tweaks that the State Legislature is expected to approve early next year, includes expanding 24/7 camera coverage within prisons to everywhere except inside toilet stalls, showers and prison cells. New York State will be required to study prison deaths, do a quicker job of notifying the families of the deceased and make footage of deaths available to investigators.

The new law expands and diversifies the State Commission of Correction, an oversight and regulatory body, and also makes it easier for the state attorney general’s office to investigate deaths inside prisons. (The bill that originally passed called for six new appointees to the State Commission of Correction; the governor’s amendments have cut that to two new part-time commissioners.)

“Although the bill signed into law does not include everything we had hoped for, it is still a serious step toward making New York State prisons less violent,” said State Senator Julia Salazar, Democrat of New York, who led the charge on getting this legislation passed.

“For too long, our prisons have been plagued by staff abuse toward incarcerated individuals, with little to no recourse.”

Across the system, the rate at which staff members have used force against inmates has been climbing steadily for the past decade.

Watchdog officials, prisoners and advocacy groups suggest that instances of the most egregious abuse have increased significantly in the past three years, and they have linked the rise partly to guards reacting to recently enacted limits on their ability to use solitary confinement. Correction officers have said that the solitary confinement restrictions have made their jobs less safe.

A spokesman for the union that represents the guards, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, denied that officers were torturing inmates, but acknowledged that they were using force more often and said it was because working conditions in the prisons had left them no choice.

Days before guards were charged in the killing of Mr. Brooks in February, thousands of officers walked off the job in illegal strikes across the state, plunging the prisons deeper into chaos.

At least seven prisoners had died during the strikes, including Mr. Nantwi. Others died by suicide when left unattended or following medical emergencies.

Some elected officials and criminal justice advocates had hoped the state would pass laws to make it easier for inmates to gain early release and for officials to discipline officers. But legislators last spring excluded these reforms.

They acknowledged that Ms. Hochul’s re-election chances may rest in part on New Yorkers’ perception of safety, making it politically difficult and less likely for the governor to embrace these measures.

The two leading Republicans who intend to challenge Ms. Hochul — Representative Elise Stefanik and Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive — will most likely focus on changes to bail laws and crime in New York City. The city’s murder rate has plummeted even as felony assaults and rapes have risen in recent years.

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