A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
New York's state prison system is under scrutiny after guards fatally beat an inmate last month. North Country Public Radio's Emily Russell reports the incident prompted protests and calls for reforms.
EMILY RUSSELL, BYLINE: It happened in less than 10 minutes. Body camera footage shows 43-year-old Robert Brooks in handcuffs and a green prison uniform. Brooks is Black, and he's surrounded by 14 prison staff. They're in a medical exam room at Marcy Correctional Facility. Over those 10 minutes, officers punch and kick Brooks. They appear to choke him. He was pronounced dead hours later. Brooks' death sparked protests outside the prison and in New York City, as captured in this video shared on X.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) What do we want?
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Justice.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) What do we want?
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Justice.
RUSSELL: New York's prison commissioner, Daniel Martuscello, said in a statement he was deeply repulsed by the footage. But Jennifer Scaife says the incident seems straight out of a prison playbook. She leads the Correctional Association of New York, a prison watchdog group.
JENNIFER SCAIFE: People talk about being taken to the infirmary to be assaulted. They talk about the complicity of medical staff in the abuse.
RUSSELL: Ezequiel Reyes says he saw a lot of inmates assaulted by officers. He served nearly 20 years in New York state prisons and was released last year. He says one problem with addressing the issue is that assaults often go unreported.
EZEQUIEL REYES: Some inmates, they're scared to write grievances to the officers because there's going to be consequences behind that. If you write a grievance, you're going to get beat up.
RUSSELL: A spokesperson from the New York State Department of Corrections said that kind of retaliation is not allowed and that all allegations of abuse are investigated. But there's another problem - officers have been found to sometimes collude and cover up abuse. Alycia Welch is the associate director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at UT Austin.
ALYCIA WELCH: We know that staff protect each other, sometimes at all costs. And sometimes, staff look the other way rather than intervene when an assault or violence does occur.
RUSSELL: There's been a recent push to increase transparency and accountability in prisons. Welch says half of all states now have some kind of oversight in place. And last year, Congress passed the Prison Oversight Act, which streamlines abuse complaints and requires regular inspections of all federal prisons. Welch says this sheds light on issues facing both inmates and staff.
WELCH: You know, what we're seeing across the country is a pervasive problem of understaffing. So many agencies are just lacking the number of staff that they need to run a safe facility.
RUSSELL: Experts say another key to increasing safety is by using body cameras. About a third of New York's corrections officers wear them. But in the fatal beating of Robert Brooks, none had them activated, so they didn't capture any sound. Since then, officers have been required to turn on their cameras any time they interact with inmates. And Governor Kathy Hochul ordered the fast track of body cameras in all state prisons. Jennifer Scaife from the state's Correctional Association says the state needs to do more to address deeper-seated problems.
SCAIFE: You can't rely on people being afraid of getting caught carrying out violence to end violence.
RUSSELL: The family of Robert Brooks is suing all the officers involved in his death, and the state is investigating. The lawsuit describes a, quote, "dark and dangerous reality for incarcerated people in New York." For NPR News, I'm Emily Russell.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.