State Democrats Get Behind NY Prison Reforms in Legislative Session’s Final Days

Democrats in the state Senate and Assembly agreed late Monday on a set of prison reforms that would increase oversight in New York correctional facilities, months after the beating deaths of Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi at the hands of corrections officers while incarcerated.

The omnibus bill, which lawmakers hope to pass in both chambers with just days before the legislative session’s end, is the first major prison accountability bill that is close to a vote after Brooks’ death last December at Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica.

While Democratic lawmakers are praising the package, the omnibus bill is facing some criticism from both the left and right.

Several of the measures in the bill come from a larger legislative package that members of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus introduced last Thursday.

“The omnibus bill is a great first step,” Melanie Dominguez, director of the Katal Center for, a criminal justice nonprofit, said at a rally in Albany on Tuesday.

The bill’s provisions include tripling the membership on a state-run prison oversight body, requiring the state to release of video footage if an incarcerated person dies and a prison guard is involved, and resolving conflicts of interest when the state Attorney General investigates deaths in prisons.

But in selecting measures from the caucus’ “Robert Brooks Blueprint for Justice and Reform,” the omnibus bill that state Democrats backed did not include parole measures that advocates have campaigned for.

“There is still much more that needs to be done by the legislature on a number of issues, including parole reform,” Dominguez said. “And we implore the legislature to pass those bills as well.”

For weeks, criminal justice advocates had pushed for several bills that would expand the state’s parole and earned time policies — including the Fair and Timely Parole bill, Elder Parole bill, the Earned Time Act, and the Second Look Act.

The Legal Aid Society, which represents low-income New Yorkers, said in a statement that lawmakers made a mistake to not include “de-carceration” policies.

The omission of those items, the group wrote, “represents a colossal failure by lawmakers to meet this moment following the brutal killings of Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi, and the continued suffering of so many of our incarcerated clients condemned to survive such harsh conditions at these facilities.”

The omnibus bill incorporated several bills that Assemblymember Emily Gallagher, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn, cosponsored – including one that that would expand the state’s prison oversight body, and another that would require the state Medical Review Board to receive information following an autopsy of an incarcerated individual.

But with the bill excluding parole reform proposals, the future of those measures remains uncertain.

“I would love to see something like a parole bill passed this session, but I do think that if we play our cards right, there might be an opportunity next year to do that,” Gallagher said.

State Sen. Mark Walczyk, a Republican from the Watertown area, said several of the measures in the bill would provide transparency and “answer some of the questions and concerns that advocates have.”

Walczyk said lawmakers should have included steps to address safety concerns that corrections officers raised, such as implementing security screenings to prevent illicit drugs from entering facilities, or a repeal of the HALT Act, which sets limits to the use of solitary confinement.

State corrections workers engaged in a three-week unsanctioned strike earlier this year to protest what they said were unsafe conditions in facilities.

“When you look overall at what our correction facilities need right now, this bill does nothing to improve the situation in our state prison system,” Walczyk said.

Story by Jeongyoon Han

Jeongyoon Han is a Capitol News Bureau reporter for the New York Public News

Image: The omnibus bill adopts a measure to expand the state’s prison oversight body that state Sen. Julia Salazar (podium) co-sponsored with Assemblymember Emily Gallagher (right holding poster), both Brooklyn Democrats. (Credit: Jeongyoon Han/New York Public News Network)