Lawmakers and criminal justice advocates are using a special legislative hearing on Wednesday as a chance to draw attention to violence in the state’s correctional facilities and renew calls for reform.
The hearing will be the first public forum for lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly to question corrections officials and criminal justice watchdogs after the death of Robert Brooks last December and Messiah Nantwi in March.
The two Black men, who were incarcerated at neighboring upstate facilities, died after being beaten by prison guards. About 20 corrections officers and prison staff face charges of murder and other crimes in the slayings.
“This is an opportunity for us to do an entire look at how the correctional system works in New York state,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, said in late March.
Criminal justice advocates have been waiting for this hearing, saying that recent events have shown that New York’s prisons are stuck in a cycle of abusive and violent practices. At least seven incarcerated people died during a three-week prison strike this winter, and the state fired about 2,000 corrections officers in March who had walked off the job.
Protracted negotiations on the state budget have delayed the hearing, which state Sen. Julia Salazar, D-Brooklyn, requested back in January and introduced a slate of reforms alongside other lawmakers in light of Brooks’ death that month. Lawmakers approved the budget last Thursday – more than a month late.
Democrats included criminal justice measures in the budget in response to the strike and inmate deaths, including requiring officers to wear body-worn cameras while interacting with incarcerated people and increasing funding for independent watchdogs.
But Salazar – who leads the Senate Crime Victims, Crime and Corrections Committee – said the state failed to include “serious reforms” in the budget, which she said were promised by the governor and legislators and “would even have prevented” the deaths of Brooks and Nantwi.
“It's long overdue that we're finally doing this,” Salazar said of the upcoming hearing. “The Legislature and governor have a responsibility to treat this as a very urgent issue.”
Melanie Bishop, who is a member of the Center for Community Alternatives and the mother an incarcerated person in a facility in the Finger Lakes region, said the legislative hearing should emphasize the need for accountability for violence and neglect in prisons.
“I hope they focus on the fact that there needs to be transparency in those facilities,” said Bishop, whose son nearly died after not having access to medication to antibiotics for a treatable jaw infection.
Bishop is part of a group of mothers who rallied in Albany on Tuesday to push for the Earned Time Act and the Second Look Act.
The Earned Time Act would allow more incarcerated people to be eligible for early release through expanded earned time programs. The legislation, advocates and progressive lawmakers said, would incentivize people to participate in educational and, volunteer programs, as well as anger management and career preparation courses.
That all helps ensure people are better when they leave prison while also helping create a safer environment while they’re there, said Assemblymember Anna Kelles, a Democrat who represents Tompkins and Cortland counties, and co-sponsors the bill with state Sen. Jeremy Cooney, D-Rochester.
“We actually lag behind considerably Republican states in these measures,” Bishop said. Oklahoma, for example, allows reductions on prison sentences of up to 78%, while New York’s maximum reduction is 33%, according to the Prison Fellowship.
The Second Look Act, which Salazar co-sponsors with Assemblymember Latrice Walker, D-Brooklyn, would allow judges, upon reviewing sentences for individuals, to reduce ones that they find to be excessive. Judges would be allowed to factor in if a person is longer a danger to society.
Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals Rowan D. Wilson has supported the measure.
“We need to stop focusing on warehousing people and actually begin to return them to our communities,” Bishop said.
