New York State legislators passed an Omnibus Prison Oversight Bill earlier this June in response to worsening conditions in the state’s jails and prisons. The bill included some measures from the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian (BPHA) Legislative Caucus’s blueprint for reforms, but organizers say not nearly enough.
The omnibus bill was a response in large part to the highly publicized death of Robert Brooks, a 43-year-old Black man who was beaten on Dec. 9 at the Marcy Correctional Facility upstate in Oneida County.
“This is a critical time of reckoning for New York State prisons. It is time to stand up for the people who have been forgotten about by too many people, but I remember,” said Assemblywoman Latrice Walker in a statement about Brooks. “His hands were cuffed behind his back when he was attacked by more than a dozen corrections officers. They punched him, kicked him, and bloodied his nose and face. Mr. Brooks died the next day at a nearby hospital. This is no way to treat a human being. This was horrific, barbaric, and just cruel.”
Walker added that Messiah Nantwi, a 22-year-old Black man who was killed at the nearby Mid-State Correctional Facility, less than three months after the death of Brooks.
“Messiah struggled with mental illness, having survived being shot more than 20 times by police. Instead of getting the help he needed while incarcerated, he got the death penalty,” said Walker. “We have a responsibility to deliver meaningful reforms to our prisons. That means more body cameras and more security cameras in prisons. That means supporting legislation that ends perpetual punishment, which we all know doesn’t make any of us safer. That means addressing the systemic violence that has been a part of our prison system in New York for far too long.”
The Robert Brooks Blueprint for Justice Reform of the BPHA Caucus had 23 items focused on accountability, justice, safety, and rehabilitation, including the Second Look Act and Earned Time Act. Second Look would allow judges to review and reconsider excessive sentencing, while Earned Time allows for “merit time” programs to motivate people to get out faster for good behavior and time served.
Out of those items, 10 measures passed in the omnibus oversight bill on June 12. Among many things, the bill requires the timely disclosure of video footage related to the death of an incarcerated individual to the attorney general within 72 hours, mandates notices of the death of someone in custody of the Department of Corrections (DOC) and community supervision, expands surveillance cameras inside facilities but not in cells, requires autopsy and investigations into in-custody deaths in the state’s prisons and jails, and requires a report and public data be put out.
The omnibus bill was sponsored by Assemblymember Erik M. Dilan and Senator Julia Salazar.
“With the Senate passage of the Prison Reform Omnibus Bill, I’m thinking of Robert Brooks, Messiah Nantwi, and their loved ones,” said Salazar in a statement. “For decades, New York’s state prisons have been plagued by a systemic pattern of racism, staff violence towards incarcerated individuals, and human rights abuses, with little to no accountability or oversight. Just within the last six months, correction officers murdered two young Black men.
“In December, we watched video footage of prison staff brutally murdering Robert Brooks. Then this past March, we learned correction officers murdered Messiah Nantwi. We know there are countless others whose names we don’t know or who have not received the same level of attention.”
While the bill strengthens oversight, organizers said it falls short of providing lifesaving pathways for incarcerated individuals to reintegrate into society and does not address the root drivers of prison deaths.
Thomas Gant, community organizer at the Center for Community Alternatives (CCA) and a formerly incarcerated individual of 25 years, agreed that the omnibus bill will help families get answers about the death of a loved one faster and increase access for public reporting. However, his organization is a huge proponent of the Second Look and Earned Time Acts, and ideally would like to see them passed as well.
“These bills give people real hope,” said Gant. “There’s real incentives and it gives people real opportunities to reunite with their families. This also offers a fair pathway home for folks on the inside, and I’ll also add that these bills are supported by Robert Ricks, Brooks’s father.”
Release Aging People in Prison Campaign director Jose Saldaña thanked legislators who backed parole reforms left out of the omnibus bill but said their colleagues “fell far short of addressing the evil roots of the racist brutality of our state’s prison system exposed by the sickening videos of guards and sergeants murdering Robert Brooks.”
“Ultimately, we are outraged but we are not defeated,” said Saldaña in a statement. “This year, we collectively secured majority co-sponsorship on the Fair & Timely Parole and Elder Parole bills in the State Senate, maintained majority support in the Assembly, advanced the bills through committees, and blocked a regressive former parole revocation officer from being appointed to the all-powerful parole board, all while doing everything in our power to protect individual members of the RAPP family who faced all manner of abuse and neglect by the state’s prison system.”
The omnibus bill now awaits Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature to become law. She recently enlisted law firm WilmerHale to audit state prisons including Marcy and Mid-State after Brooks and Nantwi’s deaths.
Ricks, the father of Robert Brooks, wrote about his support criminal justice reform legislation in a recent op-ed. He said that New York’s criminal legal system “warehouse(s) Black and Brown people, protect(s) those who brutalize them, and uphold(s) a culture of perpetual punishment.”
“My son did everything he could inside. He got his GED; studied sign language, horticulture, and maintenance; and made amends. He told me, ‘I wanna do what you do, Dad’ — mentor young people, change lives. But instead of a second chance to come home and do just that, he got a death sentence,” wrote Ricks. “I was once incarcerated for 18 months, and I never looked back. Prisons shouldn’t be warehouses. They shouldn’t be graveyards. But that’s what we’ve turned them into. And my son is proof.”
Additional reporting by Tandy Lau.