A controversial New York prison reform law was supposed to protect the lives of inmates like Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi. It didn’t.
The 43-year-old Mr. Brooks was beaten to death by prison guards Dec. 9 at Marcy Correctional Facility. The brutality was viewed by the world when New York Attorney General Leticia James released bodycam footage of a handcuffed Brooks being pummeled. The death was ruled a homicide by the New York medical examiner.
Thirteen corrections officers were facing criminal charges at Final Call press time—six for murder, three for manslaughter and one for tampering with evidence. Three other guards have pleaded guilty to reduced charges, according to news reports. (See The Final Call, Vol. 44 No. 14)
Less than 90 days later at Mid-State Correctional Facility, located across the street from Marcy, Mr. Nantwi’s near lifeless body was carried out of his cell. He was 22.
His cellmate, who has since been moved to another prison for his safety, told the New York Focus that Mr. Nantwi pleaded with the guards who struck him with batons, punched and kicked him. The guards did not wear body cameras, according to the Focus report.
The inmate deaths brightened a spotlight already on prison reform and inmate justice issues in New York. Particular focus has been on a 2022 law called the HALT (Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act), passed by a supermajority of the New York state legislature to address use of extended solitary confinement and other “inhumane” forms of punishment.
The prison guards’ union and opponents of the bill have called for its repeal. Guards contend the bill has made prisons less safe, and some statistics may support their claim.
Assaults on staff statewide by inmates rose 16 percent, according to Dept. of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) statistics, from 1,672 in 2023 to 1,938 in 2024.
Inmate-on-inmate assaults rose nearly 28 percent. However, physical injury does not have to occur to qualify as an assault statistic, DOCCS reports. State prisons held 33,465 inmates compared to 13,998 guards in 2024.
In response, prison guards staged a 22-day strike starting Feb. 27, winning temporary concessions to HALT before ending the illegal walkout. Two thousand prison guards who didn’t return to work by a March 10 deadline were fired.
“There is no indication that HALT has been successful,” NYSCOPBA (New York Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association) spokesman James Miller told The Final Call. “Violence in the prisons is out of control, and it didn’t happen overnight. The concessions made (to HALT) are just the tip of the iceberg.”
Inmates suffered from a lack of medical attention and food service during the strike. They were held mostly in lockdown. Gov. Kathy Hochul mobilized 6,000 National Guards personnel to compensate for the missing workforce.
Prisoners reported that Mr. Nantwi’s incident started when a National Guardsman called for assistance following a brief and uneventful argument with the inmate who reportedly suffered from mental health issues. A guard and two SWAT-style Correctional Emergency Response Team (CERT) officers responded.
Although Mr. Nantwi had returned to his cell, responding CERT officers slammed him to the ground and one officer kicked him in the face with a “two-step running start,” the cellmate said, according to the published report.
Special Prosecutor and Onondaga District Attorney William Fitzpatrick is investigating both cases.
A bag of ‘evil deeds’
Grassroots activists say the union’s motive for the strike was to distract from breaking news about indictments of prison guards involved in Brooks’s murder. The strike ended a week after Mr. Nantwi’s death.
Before the passage of the HALT Act, facilities could hold an inmate in solitary confinement (also called Special Housing Units) for up to 23 hours a day for days, weeks or even years with only one hour daily of out-of-cell recreation.
HALT states an inmate can be held no longer than 17 hours a day for a maximum of 15 consecutive days and a hearing must be held to justify the confinement. After 15 days, the inmate must be given restorative training and recreation time.
Activists argue the Dept. of Corrections hasn’t properly or completely implemented the law and the union uses arguments of “low staffing” to win concessions to the Act.
State Inspector General Lucy Lang pushes back on the short staffing argument, however, citing reasons for staff absences. The State Insurance Fund found that “while DOCCS employees only comprise roughly 15 percent of the State workforce.
They have been the source of 44 percent of the workers’ compensation claimant fraud cases investigated by that division since 2010.
As a result of this disparity, SIF has indicated its intention to create a new unit within its claims department to focus solely on DOCCS employee related claimant fraud issues,” she said in a report.
The union also argues that solitary confinement doesn’t exist in their facilities, only Special Housing Units (SHU) away from the general population where inmates have “more access to resources and programs than general population.”
“I have to give the union credit for reaching into their bag of ‘evil deeds,’” said Thomas Gant, the formerly incarcerated activist with the Center for Community Alternatives (CCA). Mr. Gant served 25 years in prison and described the union’s distinction between SHUs and solitary confinement as “a play on semantics.”
State Senator Cordell Claire (D-30th) declared that DOCCS overreached its authority to “unilaterally suspend” aspects of HALT, saying such actions “undermine the separation of powers and violate legislative authority.”
“The ongoing violations of the HALT Law, including the use of solitary confinement for people with disabilities and for reasons prohibited by the law, are unacceptable,” she said in an email responding to Final Call questions.
DOCCS Commissioner Daniel Martuscello III told The Final Call via email that any recommendations that come from the temporary agreement with the prison guard union regarding HALT will be “presented to the New York State Legislature regarding changes.”
A long, sordid history
Solitary confinement has a long, sordid history as an inhumane treatment that continues today. HALT legislation draws from the “Mandela Rules,” UN guidelines for human dignity in prison management named after freedom fighter Nelson Mandela.
A 2019 study of 229,274 released inmates from North Carolina prisons from 2000 to 2015 found that inmates who had spent any time in solitary confinement—compared to those who spent no time—were 24 percent more likely to die in the first year after release, particularly from suicide and homicide.
They were also 127 percent more likely to die from an opioid overdose in the first two weeks after release, the report noted. The study was published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA).
NBC News recently reported that six inmates at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia burned themselves to bring attention to “intolerable” conditions and “excessive stints” in solitary confinement. (See The Final Call Vol. 44 No. 10)
Virginia Delegate Michael Jones said the main complaint from prisoners during a visit to the facility was the use of isolation. The Virginia Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit to eliminate solitary confinement at the facility.
Similar to New York, the Virginia corrections department told NBC they use a program called Restorative Housing Units, which the nongovernmental American Correctional Assn. says meets the same United Nations definition of solitary confinement.
“Using solitary as a way to control the population has a lot of risks and downsides, not only for incarcerated people but the whole institution,” said Wanda Bertram, spokesperson for the Prison Policy Institute.
She argued for long-term strategies like hiring more staff, better pay and releasing more prisoners for minor, nonviolent offenses instead of rolling back the HALT Act.
In SHU, an inmate is placed in an isolated cell in a desolate area of the prison with caged cells sometimes with plexiglass over the bars, Mr. Gant with CCA explained to The Final Call.
They are held there 23 hours a day with limited to no communication with others, he said, adding the firing of the 2,000 officers was “a good thing” because “they were the bad actors.”
Opposition to HALT and the debate about prison guard safety is about one thing—job security, said Derrick Hamilton, co-founder of Family and Friends of the Wrongfully Convicted (FFWC). He and members Kevin Renny Smith and Stephen Braithwaite also founded Incarcerated Peoples’ Lives Matter (PLM).
“Racist guards in small towns depend on the prison industrial complex to feed their families. In reality, it is the guards who are dangerous. HALT was enacted because guards were abusing their power,” Mr. Hamilton said.
On any given day, nearly 2,400 inmates are housed in solitary confinement, with another mostly young offenders housed in “keeplock,” meaning their own cells with the same limitations as solitary confinement, says Human Rights Watch (HRW), a social justice watchdog group. The inmates are disproportionately Black and Latino, HRW reports.
HALT supporters contend that solitary confinement causes symptoms associated with psychosis, bipolar disorder, depression and other mental states.
“When the inmate is released, they’re going to come back to the community and take that anger and hatred out on the community. We want them to come back in a better condition than when they left,” said Mr. Smith, executive director of FFW.
