Lawmakers are mandating more cameras in prisons and will beef up the entities responsible for overseeing the correctional system under a bill approved Thursday.
The omnibus bill aimed at increasing transparency in New York’s prisons is the first major piece of legislation to pass since the recent beating deaths of two handcuffed people while incarcerated at separate upstate facilities.
While leaders in Albany see the bill as a good step to address ongoing violence in New York’s prisons, some criminal justice advocates said state Democrats did not go far enough.
The state will now have to notify the public when someone dies in prison and release video footage related to the death if a prison guard is involved. Another measure would require the state to conduct a study on deaths in prisons and provide recommendations.
The bill, which includes about 10 separate measures in total, is now headed to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk.
A spokesperson for Hochul said she will review the legislation.
State Democrats had spent much of the legislative session deliberating how to implement reforms to the state’s prison system after the deaths of the two incarcerated Black men, 43-year-old Robert Brooks and 22-year-old Messiah Nantwi, galvanized the public and highlighted increasing violence in the state’s prison system.
That legislative process got bogged down by procedural delays, and a three-week unsanctioned prison strike that revealed widespread workplace dissatisfaction among corrections officers.
But the omnibus bill is drawing criticism from progressive groups because it doesn’t include changes to the state’s parole process or the option for judges to reconsider lengthy sentences. The Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus endorsed both of those revisions in a collection of more than 20 bills that they called the “Robert Brooks Blueprint for Justice and Reform.”
“Without these reforms, the system will continue to perpetuate harm, disproportionately impacting communities of color,” the Legal Aid Society wrote in a statement. “This legislative package fails to confront the impunity correction staff enjoy when they abuse those in their custody.”
At a news conference on Thursday, several state lawmakers who were key to getting the bill passed conceded that the bill did not include everything they had personally hoped for.
“This is not a comprehensive criminal legal reform omnibus bill,” said state Sen. Julia Salazar, a Brooklyn Democrat who leads her chamber’s Standing Committee on Crime Victims, Crime and Correction.
“We know that there is exceedingly more that we are fighting for ... but that is separate from what we are doing today to hold (the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision) accountable, to bring transparency and improve the prison system in our state,” Salazar said.
“By no means do I feel this is a victory lap,” said Assemblymember Erik Dilan, a fellow Brooklyn Democrat who serves as Salazar’s counterpart in the lower chamber.
Also left out of the omnibus bill was the Earned Time Act, which would have expanded ways for incarcerated people to shave time off their sentences for good behavior and by participating in educational and self-betterment programs.
Hochul and lawmakers had begun negotiations on earned time provisions while in the process of passing the state budget earlier this year, but failed to reach a consensus.
“I do believe that by not including the Earned Time Act or some of the other bills that were discussed, it's a little bit of a missed opportunity, because we did have some significant progress made during the elongated budget process this year,” said state Sen. Jeremy Cooney, a Rochester Democrat who co-sponsored the bill.
Dilan said that lawmakers tried to include iterations of the bills in the final legislation but couldn’t reach an agreement between lawmakers in both chambers.
“Folks conceptually agree that merit time for good behavior and earning that time is a policy that we'd like to get to,” Dilan said. “I think getting there on the details as to how much time and how much time credit proved to be the stumbling block.”
Republicans criticized the bill, saying it doesn’t address the complaints of corrections officers. The officers raised concerns over rising violence in prison facilities and called on the state to re-hire staff who were fired for standing on the picket line.
