Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll get details on abusive treatment of inmates by guards in New York State prisons. We’ll also find out how a hospital in upstate New York brought down the number of C-sections it performs.
Abusive treatment of inmates in New York State prisons is rising and becoming more vicious.
Guards say this is happening because their jobs have become more dangerous, but my colleagues Jan Ransom and Bianca Pallaro pointed to a different reality after reviewing thousands of pages of court records and disciplinary records and interviewing dozens of current and former inmates. I asked Jan to discuss their reporting, which found that state prison guards had put inmates in restraints and assaulted them far more often than was previously known — and New York’s prison system was already known for its brutality.
What is it about the culture of the state’s prisons that has allowed abuse to happen?
Our reporting has shown that the abuse and torture of inmates in the New York State prison system has continued to happen in large part because state officials with the power to address the issue have largely tolerated it. They have treated a lot of the cases as isolated incidents of abuse by a few bad apples or have said that uses of force that appear excessive were justified.
Many of the cases that the department investigated boiled down to the word of an officer against that of a prisoner. Department investigators often took the word of the officers and other staff members, unless there was video or other evidence backing the prisoner’s allegations. We have seen this even when a correction officer is accused of the same type of abuse by multiple inmates.
This kind of response helps to create a deep-seated culture of brutality.
You found that abuse by guards increased significantly in the past three years. That coincides with a law that took effect in 2022 that limits who can be held in isolation. Has it made conditions less safe?
The law bars jails and prisons in New York from holding anyone in special housing for solitary confinement for more than 15 consecutive days and anyone with a disability from being held in solitary confinement at all.
Before the law, thousands of inmates were kept in solitary confinement cells, which are roughly the size of a parking space. Some prisoners spent months, even years, there. As a result, many prisoners suffered from mental health problems.
Prisoners and staff members maintain that conditions in the prisons have become more dangerous in recent years. Officers have said that they have been unable to hold problematic inmates in solitary confinement. Prisoners, their advocates and state watchdog officials have linked the guards’ frustration with the law to a rise in instances of brutality against inmates.
Some 75 percent of the people who work in state prisons are white, and the percentage of prisoners who are Black and Hispanic is almost the same — 73 percent. How often do episodes involving violence have racist overtones?
Our reporting did not track how often episodes of torture had racist overtones, but it is a theme that we saw in some of the cases we reviewed and the data we analyzed. It was not unusual for the officers, while attacking a prisoner, to also use racial epithets or racially offensive language.
What about guards who have been repeatedly accused of abusive conduct? Has the state disciplined or fired them?
In a 20-year period from January 2000 to October 2020, state prison officials fired 28 officers in connection with the abuse of an inmate. We found that even when officers were accused of repeated misconduct — including punching shackled prisoners in the face, forcing them to perform oral sex, stomping on their heads or striking their genitals with batons and other offenses — they were not fired.
Weather
Expect a cloudy day with temperatures around 57 and rain in the late afternoon. Rainy conditions are expected to continue tonight, with temperatures around 55.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Thursday (Thanksgiving).
The latest New York news
-
Judge dismisses cases against James and Comey: A federal judge found that the prosecutor pursuing charges against Letitia James, the state attorney general, and James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, had been unlawfully appointed by President Trump. The rulings are a setback for Trump, who has sought to use the criminal justice system against his perceived enemies.
-
The Port Authority’s leader is retiring: Rick Cotton, who oversaw the rebuilding of LaGuardia Airport and several other major infrastructure projects, has led the agency for more than eight years.
-
Fatal stabbing near Times Square: A 22-year-old man from Rhode Island was stabbed at about 1 a.m. at the corner of West 49th Street and Seventh Avenue. It happened a day after another early-morning murder in Midtown Manhattan, and about a week after Kris Boyd of the New York Jets was shot on West 38th Street at about 2 a.m.
-
N.B.A. coach pleads not guilty: Chauncey Billups, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, appeared in court to answer to charges that he had participated in rigged poker games that, prosecutors say, defrauded people of at least $7 million.
How one hospital lowered its C-section rates
C-sections are widely used — too widely used, some experts say. Many of the doctors whom my colleague Sarah Kliff interviewed told her that it would be almost impossible to lower the nation’s stubbornly high rate of C-sections.
She wrote about one hospital that has managed to lower its own rate — Rochester General in Rochester, N.Y. Its drop was among the steepest on a spreadsheet constructed by Bianca Pallaro, a data reporter with The Times, and her editor, Jeremy Singer-Vine, based on C-section data from more than 1,600 hospitals.
Six years ago, 40 percent of the healthy, first-time mothers who had babies at Rochester General were delivered by C-sections, a far higher percentage than the 24 percent recommended by the federal government. New York State’s Medicaid program is paying bonuses to hospitals that approach an even lower target: 18 percent.
C-sections can be lifesaving when they are needed. But when they are not, they can prolong recoveries, complicate future deliveries and even put the mother’s life at risk.
They are also more expensive than vaginal deliveries. The average insurance payment to a hospital for a C-section is about $17,000, $6,000 more than for a vaginal delivery, even though a C-section typically takes less time. One study found that C-sections were most often scheduled in the early evening, possibly because doctors did not want to wait for late-night deliveries.
Rochester General, a teaching hospital that delivers 1,800 babies a year, had already changed its payment system for obstetricians, eliminating incentives for C-sections over natural deliveries, before it began directing low-risk patients to midwives in 2021. By then, Dr. Elizabeth Bostock, the head of the obstetrics department, had spoken with doctors about their surgery rates — conversations that she said were sometimes uncomfortable.
Then, in 2023, Rochester General circulated a checklist with steps to promote vaginal delivery.
Rochester’s rate is now 25 percent, up slightly after steady declines from 2021 to 2024.
Dr. Fran Haydanek, the medical director of the obstetrics department at Rochester General, regularly reviews the hospital’s C-section data. Some patients requested C-sections, she said, because they had unrealistic expectations of how quickly they would give birth after their labor was induced.
That led to two changes for women scheduled for inductions. Doctors now offer to place a balloon in the cervix of a mother-to-be two days before a scheduled induction, to shorten time in the hospital. And the hospital set up a prenatal class about inductions.
METROPOLITAN diary
Savor the Moment
Dear Diary:
Late to work on a cold, sunny, spring morning, I decided to take a shortcut through Madison Square Park.
With the sound of traffic and barking dogs behind me, I joined the meeting I was late for via phone and hoped that I would not have to speak.
As it got later, I started to sweat from what had turned into a jog to First Avenue. Dodging the dog walkers, I saw a single white flower petal twirling gently as it fell from the sky.
I stopped and stood still. The sound of traffic, dogs and my meeting seemed to fade away. I was amazed at the beauty of the single, pristine, delicate white petal as it danced through the cool spring air toward the ground.
In my haste to get to work, I had failed to appreciate the beauty of my surroundings: the dogs, the people, the flowers, even the traffic.
The petal landed, and I picked it up. It was clearly a sign that I needed to appreciate the beauty around me, no matter how stressed out I was feeling.
But it wasn’t a flower petal. It was a discarded receipt from the M23-SBS bus.
And I was late for work.
— David Daniel
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post What’s Behind the Rise in Brutality in N.Y. Prisons? appeared first on New York Times.
