New York State lawmakers this week called on Gov. Kathy Hochul to approve prison reform legislation that has been waiting months for her signature, citing an investigation by The New York Times that revealed an uptick in prisoners credibly accusing guards of violent attacks.
The investigation, published Monday, revealed that state correction officers have been accused of committing more than 120 acts of brutality — including punching, kicking and stomping on inmates and even waterboarding them — all in the past decade, and all while the prisoners were handcuffed or otherwise restrained.
The circumstances of many of the attacks resembled those that preceded the fatal beatings of two inmates in Central New York prisons, Robert L. Brooks and Messiah Nantwi, which led to criminal charges against 20 guards earlier this year.
“Nobody, regardless of their circumstances, should ever face torture or abuse,” State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Democratic majority leader, said on Wednesday. “It represents both a moral failure and a systemic failure.”
Ms. Stewart-Cousins called on Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, to enact the reform legislation, a package of at least nine different measures intended to “improve transparency, accountability and oversight” at the prisons.
The bills, which would require 24-hour surveillance camera coverage over nearly every part of state prisons and the collection and sharing of data on prisoner complaints and deaths, passed the Legislature in June and advanced to the governor’s office, where they are awaiting her signature.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Hochul, who can sign, veto or try to negotiate amendments to the measures, said the governor “has strongly condemned acts of violence within New York’s prisons.”
“Governor Hochul has zero tolerance for violence of any kind,” said the spokeswoman, Jess D’Amelia, who added, “All allegations of violence are fully investigated and anyone found responsible for any wrongdoing is held accountable to the fullest extent of the law and collective bargaining agreements.”
Records and interviews show, however, that guards rarely lose their jobs when they are investigated for brutalizing inmates, and prisoners and their advocates have said that, more often, the inmates are falsely accused of instigating the violence.
The reform bills, Ms. Stewart-Cousins said, were “designed to bring sunlight, enforcement and accountability into a system that has operated without it for far too long.”
The cases revealed by The Times, she added, “show that more work is still needed.”
Those cases included the account of Tyrone McCalla, 38, who said he was handcuffed and beaten by guards at Clinton Correctional Facility in March 2022.
In a video obtained by The Times, Mr. McCalla can be seen interacting with guards near a metal detector station before the incident. Guards then take Mr. McCalla to the ground before leading him away.
In the infirmary, out of sight of the cameras, Mr. McCalla said, they punched him, kicked him in the genitals and held a plastic bag over his head, nearly suffocating him.
In another case documented by The Times, an inmate named Paris Perkins said he, too, was restrained, beaten and nearly suffocated in the same way.
Mr. Perkins, 47, said he was waiting in line for the mess hall in February 2023 when guards slammed his head into a wall, threw him to the floor and handcuffed him.
The Times obtained video from that day showing Mr. Perkins, whose head appears to be bleeding, being led away by guards.
Mr. Perkins said they also took him to the infirmary, where they punched, kicked and stomped on him, breaking five of his teeth. His brother, Curtis Perkins, 37, said he was attacked in a similar way the same day.
Mr. McCalla and the Perkins brothers were three of nine inmates who said they were restrained, beaten and nearly suffocated with plastic bags while being held at Clinton.
A spokesman for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said all of those inmates’ complaints had been investigated and determined to be unfounded or unsubstantiated.
A Times analysis of state corrections department data showed that the rate at which staff members have used force against inmates has been climbing steadily for the past decade.
Watchdog officials and prisoners have linked the increase in part to anger among guards over recently enacted limits on the use of solitary confinement. The rise in the use of force, they said, coincided with a general increase in rule-breaking by officers, who maintain that the solitary confinement restrictions have made their jobs more dangerous.
A spokesman for the corrections officers’ union denied that guards were brutalizing inmates and said officers used force only to restore order and minimize injuries to staff members and other inmates.
But advocates for reform have nevertheless called for greater accountability in prisons.
“The recent reporting on the normalized torture incarcerated people face at the hands of prison staff reinforces once again the desperate need for reform,” said State Senator Julia Salazar, a Brooklyn Democrat, who joined Ms. Stewart-Cousins this week in urging Ms. Hochul to sign the prison measures. “New York should be ashamed to have employees on its payroll that waterboard, choke, beat and sexually assault restrained individuals under their care.”
And Assemblywoman Phara Souffrant Forrest, another Brooklyn Democrat, said the Times reporting echoed complaints her office had received from incarcerated people and their families.
“It can’t be that inmates from across New York State with different crimes and different backgrounds are all saying the same thing: that they are victimized while behind bars,” Ms. Souffrant Forrest said in a phone interview. “The idea is that people can’t be making up the same story over and over again. Why are we questioning it when it is people behind bars?”
Ms. Souffrant Forrest said that signing the prison reform package was “the least the governor could do.”
The spokeswoman for Ms. Hochul said the governor had already taken steps to combat brutality in the prisons, including by dedicating funding to internal investigations and speeding the installation of cameras in correctional facilities.
But Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a watchdog agency that monitors the state’s prisons, said the prison system needed more than just additional cameras.
“We can’t just rely on a piece of technology to solve a culture reinforced over the years and reinforced by public attitudes about who is in the prisons,” Ms. Scaife said, adding, “This is a problem for the governor.”
Bianca Pallaro contributed reporting.
Jan Ransom is an investigative reporter for The Times focusing on the criminal justice system, law enforcement and incarceration in New York.
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