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Alliance Alert: The Alliance for Rights and Recovery commends Governor Kathy Hochul for signing the criminal justice oversight omnibus and taking an important step toward improving safety and accountability within ����������’s prison system. We also want to recognize and thank the many advocates, directly impacted family members, and legislators, particularly those who continued pushing even in the face of immense political and institutional resistance, who worked tirelessly to get this package of reforms across the line.

This legislation represents a meaningful response to horrific abuses that never should have occurred and affirms a basic principle: people who are incarcerated are still entitled to dignity, safety, and accountability from the systems charged with their care. Expanded camera coverage, strengthened oversight, improved transparency around deaths in custody, and an enhanced role for independent investigation are all critical components of reform.

At the same time, we know there is still much more work to do. True safety for those behind bars requires continued action to reduce violence, end abuse, ensure meaningful consequences for staff misconduct, and fundamentally reorient jail and prison systems toward human rights, health, and rehabilitation. Accountability must be ongoing, not episodic, and reforms must continue to center the voices of those most impacted.

The Alliance remains committed to working alongside advocates, legislators, and impacted communities to push for the next phase of reforms that move ���������� closer to a system rooted in dignity, transparency, and justice for all.

N.Y. Governor Signs Prison Reform Bill After Beatings and Deaths
By Benjamin Oreskes and Jan Ransom | ���������� Times | December 19, 2025

A year after a video of a deadly prison beating by corrections officers came to light, Gov. Kathy Hochul of ���������� signed into law on Friday a range of new reforms meant to expand oversight of guards’ behavior and make the prisons safer.

Ms. Hochul’s approval comes during a tumultuous period for the state’s prison system, which is understaffed and was hobbled by weeks of rolling wildcat strikes earlier this year. Amid the unrest, Ms. Hochul decided to  7,000 National Guard members, inflaming anger among some lawmakers and corrections officers who regularly appeared in Albany for protests.

“Our work is never done, and I will not stop working to ensure our correctional facilities are safe for all,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement, adding that more reforms are necessary because everyone “deserves to be safe, whether they are employed there or serving their time.”

Momentum for these reforms began to build last December after the state released footage of corrections officers viciously beating to death a handcuffed prisoner, Robert L. Brooks, at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica. Mr. Brooks’ death infuriated Ms. Hochul, who called for the corrections officers and a nurse involved to be fired. Ten officers were charged in connection to his death, including six with murder. Ms. Hochul applauded the indictments.

Three months later, another prisoner, , who was in a facility across the road from where Mr. Brooks was fatally beaten, was brutally attacked by guards and died. Ten officers were charged in his death, including .

A recent  found that in the past decade, prison guards have been accused of more than 120 acts of brutality that amounted to torture — including punching, kicking and stomping on inmates or even waterboarding them — all while they were handcuffed or otherwise restrained.

The circumstances of many of the attacks resembled those that preceded the deadly beatings of Mr. Brooks and Mr. Nantwi.

Mr. Brooks’s father, Robert Ricks, became a vocal proponent for reform, regularly appearing in Albany and at events around the state calling for these measures to be passed. Ms. Hochul included $400 million in the budget this year to increase camera coverage in prisons and  the head of the prison where Mr. Brooks was killed,

On Friday, Ms. Hochul called Mr. Ricks to tell him that she had signed the bill.

Mr. Ricks said in an interview that the governor told him about her experience of visiting the room within Marcy Correctional Facility where Mr. Brooks was killed. She expressed her sympathy for his son’s death, and he said she wanted to meet soon.

Though there is still a lot of work to be done, Mr. Ricks added that the new reforms are gratifying because it makes him feel that his son did not die in vain.

“This was a bittersweet day, because I’m constantly being reminded of the fact that my son was murdered,” he said. “Any time anything of significance take place, it takes me right back to to the day that I saw him in the body bag. That’s when it really became real.”

The legislative package, which Ms. Hochul agreed to with some changes that the State Legislature is expected to approve early next year, includes expanding 24/7 camera coverage within prisons to everywhere except inside toilet stalls, showers and prison cells. ���������� State will be required to study prison deaths, do a quicker job of notifying the families of the deceased and make footage of deaths available to investigators.

The new law expands and diversifies the State Commission of Correction, an oversight and regulatory body, and also makes it easier for the state attorney general’s office to investigate deaths inside prisons. (The bill that originally passed called for six new appointees to the State Commission of Correction; the governor’s amendments have cut that to two new part-time commissioners.)

“Although the bill signed into law does not include everything we had hoped for, it is still a serious step toward making ���������� State prisons less violent,” said State Senator Julia Salazar, Democrat of ����������, who  on getting this legislation passed.

“For too long, our prisons have been plagued by staff abuse toward incarcerated individuals, with little to no recourse.”

Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association of ����������, a watchdog agency that monitors the state’s prisons, called the law “a big step in the right direction.”

“The number of issues addressed in this single bill is pretty monumental,” Ms. Scaife said. “It’s foundational to further reforms, and that’s the thing — further reforms have to follow.”

Across the system, the rate at which staff members have used force against inmates has been  for the past decade.

Watchdog officials, prisoners and advocacy groups suggest that instances of the most egregious abuse have increased significantly in the past three years, and they  partly to guards reacting to recently enacted limits on their ability to use solitary confinement. Correction officers have said that the solitary confinement restrictions have made their jobs less safe.

A spokesman for the union that represents the guards, the ���������� State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, denied that officers were torturing inmates, but acknowledged that they were using force more often and said it was because working conditions in the prisons . Asked Friday about the legislation’s signing, a spokesman for the union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Days before guards  in February, thousands of officers  across the state, plunging the prisons deeper into chaos.

At least seven prisoners had died during the strikes, including Mr. Nantwi. Others died by suicide when left unattended or following medical emergencies.

Some elected officials and criminal justice advocates had hoped the state would pass laws to make it easier for inmates to gain early release and for officials to discipline officers. But legislators last 

They acknowledged that Ms. Hochul’s re-election chances may rest in part on ����������ers’ perception of safety, making it politically difficult and less likely for the governor to embrace these measures.

The leading Republican who intends to challenge Ms. Hochul — Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive — will most likely focus on changes to bail laws and crime in ���������� City. The city’s murder rate has plummeted even as felony assaults and rapes have risen in recent years.