As dust begins to settle on prison chaos, reformers hold somber hearing

ALBANY — 'I hate coming here,' Robert Ricks said.
Ricks sat at the focal point of a hearing room in the New York state legislative office building. He'd traveled to Albany last Wednesday to testify for a second time about his son, Robert Brooks, whom prison guards beat to death in December at the Central New York prison where he was incarcerated. Video of the gruesome killing sparked nationwide outcry and calls to reform New York's state prison system.
Prison reform was the topic of last week's all-day hearing, which took place as the state legislature approaches its final weeks of the annual legislative session. Amid emotional testimony, Ricks outlined the Robert Brooks Agenda for Justice, a suite of legislation to expand prison oversight and make it easier to hold abusive officers to account. If lawmakers don't pass the bills before the session ends in less than a month, they'll have to wait until next year to try again.
Earlier in the hearing, the head of the state prison system had touted reforms he implemented after Brooks was killed. Ricks, seated next to two other loved ones of Black men who recently died after beatings by prison guards, expressed skepticism at the state's willingness to curb the violence.
'From the moment I step in this building, I want to cry,' he said. 'And I don't want to cry because my son is dead. I want to cry because there's an eerie feeling in the African American community that's often unspoken that nothing's going to change.'
'I come here feeling like I'm getting ready to fight the wind,' he said.
During the nearly seven-hour hearing on Wednesday, advocates, union representatives, and family members of incarcerated people testified about conditions in New York's state prisons, particularly corrections officer violence.
Despite the somber subject matter, the hearing kicked off with optimistic testimony from Daniel Martuscello, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision's earnest commissioner. For an hour and a half, he fielded questions from lawmakers and advocates about how his prison system is handling its worst year in recent memory.
Just weeks after Brooks's killing — and hours after a special prosecutor announced the impending arrest of the guards who killed him — corrections officers across DOCCS's 42 facilities launched a wildcat strike to protest what they called unsafe working conditions.
The three-week strike resulted in 2,000 guards losing their jobs and saw the deployment of thousands of National Guard personnel to staff the prisons, many of which remain on partial lockdown. During the strike, corrections officers allegedly killed another incarcerated man — 22-year-old Messiah Nantwi, whose mentor also testified Wednesday — at a prison across the street from where guards beat Brooks to death.
With the dust from the strike and killings still settling (3,000 National Guard troops remain in the prisons, Martuscello testified), the prison chief is fielding flak from all sides. He's juggling reformers' calls for accountability, demands from officers for new solitary confinement and staffing policies, and a massive hit to his prisons' already under-capacity staffing levels. At the hearing, legislators grilled him over progress on measures he's promised to curb abuse.
Martuscello was confident about 'improving prison culture.' The agency is contracting with a law firm and two nonprofit organizations to evaluate every aspect of how staff and incarcerated people interact, he explained. The law firm will issue publicly available recommendations late in the summer.
DOCCS can also change its culture through recruitment, Martuscello said. He touted a new state policy, passed earlier this month in the budget, that lowers the minimum age for corrections officers from 21 to 18, as well as an aggressive recruitment campaign DOCCS has launched to fill 4,500 guard positions. New personnel can bring a new attitude, he said: 'That's an opportunity you don't often get.'
To address demands for more direct reform, Martuscello outlined a series of initiatives he launched with Governor Kathy Hochul in recent months. None will fundamentally alter DOCCS's structure or the way it conducts oversight, and they've left others who testified at the hearing unimpressed.
DOCCS has embedded its internal accountability unit, the Office of Special Investigations, in every prison, Martuscello explained, and is getting over $7 million to expand the unit. Lawyers who represent incarcerated people are skeptical that that will improve accountability. At the hearing, they characterized the office as a black box and said that DOCCS's internal mechanisms for investigating abuse more often than not let guards off the hook.
'DOCCS's internal investigations through the Office of Special Investigations are opaque, slow, and default to weighing staff credibility over incarcerated voices, regardless of the facts,' said Antony Gemmell, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society's Prisoners' Rights Project.
Martuscello also touted whistleblower policies he revamped after Brooks's killing. DOCCS now has an anonymous tipline for staff to report their colleagues' malfeasance or abuse, he said. Representatives for DOCCS staff said they thought little of the effort.
'It's toilet paper,' Wayne Spence, president of the union that represents DOCCS civilian staff, like nurses, testified at the hearing. The efforts do little to discourage retaliation against whistleblowers, he said.
There was one effort the commissioner highlighted that everyone who testified seemed to support: more body-worn cameras. DOCCS has long promised to equip all of its officers with body cameras, but the rollout has taken years. Spurred by the Brooks and Nantwi killings, the state fast-tracked the effort with $18 million in additional funding. All facilities should have body cameras by mid-summer, Martuscello said, and officers will be required to have them turned on when they're interacting with incarcerated people.
Martuscello's reforms aren't enough to fix the embattled agency, according to its critics. Reform-minded lawmakers have this session introduced legislation — part of the Robert Brooks Agenda — to expand prison oversight and officer accountability, as well as to give incarcerated people opportunities to earn time off their sentences.
One bill would expand the powers of the Correctional Association of New York, the 180-year-old nonprofit organization tasked by the legislature with overseeing prison conditions. Another would add commissioner slots to the State Commission of Correction, which has oversight power over all carceral facilities in New York state.
SCOC rarely uses its full authority to hold jails and prisons accountable, as New York Focus has reported. It also dodges scrutiny: SCOC representatives declined to attend last week's hearing, legislators said. (When asked why, a spokesperson simply said that 'SCOC submitted written testimony for the hearing.') The SCOC bill would triple the number of commissioners and require that they come from diverse backgrounds, including criminal defense and public health.
Yet another bill would allow the DOCCS commissioner to discipline officers for serious misconduct without having to go through mandatory arbitration. A 2023 Marshall Project investigation showed that, over a 12-year period, arbitrators reinstated three out of every four DOCCS corrections officers who were fired for abusing incarcerated people or covering up abuse.
Whether any of these bills make it to the Assembly or Senate floors before the end of the legislative session is an open question — subject to a complex process largely controlled by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Brooks's father, Ricks, isn't optimistic. Nor, it seems, are some of the legislators calling for reforms.
'Will they listen to us or will they continue to play politics with Black and brown men's lives?' Eddie Gibbs, the first formerly incarcerated person elected to the state Assembly, wondered at the hearing. He told the story of his own beatdown by guards at Midstate Correctional Facility, where Nantwi was allegedly murdered, in the late 1980s.
'They play politics with people's lives,' he said of legislators unwilling to support the reforms. 'Their reelection is more important than your sons' lives.'

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Al Sharpton told me. 'And I think that is why we ended up where we are.' Sharpton, speaking in the back of his National Action Network's Harlem headquarters just minutes after hosting Cuomo there, said: 'I would have wanted to see Tish James run.' With James out and Adams cutting his deal with Trump, Cuomo was emboldened. Some Democrats, including Hochul and most crucially James, cast about for an alternative and landed on City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, also a Black woman. However, Adams got in late, had little name ID and wasn't able to raise much money. And by then, many New York Democrats knew, and feared, Cuomo well enough to jump on board with him or at least stay out of his way. 'The only people with 'rizz' are the anti-establishment socialists who can't win citywide,' complained Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist and still-deciding New York voter. 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Cardinal Timothy Dolan, New York's Archbishop, presided. Dignitaries filled the pews and took to the pulpit to remember the long-serving House member and 'Lion of Lenox Avenue,' who 'thought the 'H' in Heaven stood for Harlem,' as one of his eulogists said. It was a grand mix of the Black church and the Catholic church, and it was exquisitely timed in the political calendar in a way I think Rangel would have loved. 'What a scene!' he may have said in that gravelly, 'New Yawk' voice, eyes twinkling and bow tie knotted smartly. The mayoral candidates played to type. Adams arrived at the front of the church, with most people already seated, at 9:54 for a 9:45 service. He's only the second Black mayor in the city's history, but he didn't speak and was scarcely mentioned, fitting for someone who's become a non-person in the minds of political New York. Mamdani zipped around the pews before the service, offering a hand to people he recognized, being greeted by some he didn't and generally playing the role of both outsider and young man in a hurry. He sat behind a massive marble pillar that had a wheelchair stuffed between it and the pew, 11 rows back from the front of the sanctuary. Cuomo sat in the fourth row and acted as though he were still in high office. He chatted with Nancy Pelosi, an old family friend, before the service and visited with other current and former officials, but notably avoided his former nemesis, de Blasio, who was inches away. When Mamdani finally mustered the courage to walk to the front rows and greet the VIPs before the service, none stood except for de Blasio. It was great theater, an allegory for the campaign, but the politicking in such an august setting was also something else: a reminder that there's always been a thin line separating the hacks and the statesmen of New York. The Roosevelts didn't have clean hands when it came to Tammany Hall, and their highbrow heirs also did what it took to win. One of my favorite New York artifacts is the letter an on-the-make professor named Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote to Tammany boss Carmine De Sapio in 1971. Addressing his note to De Sapio in the 'United States Prison Facility' of Allendale, Pennsylvania, Moynihan recalls his 11th Avenue upbringing ('George Washington Plunkitt's old district'), laments that De Sapio was denied parole and offers regret that he 'never got to know you fellows very well' before assuring the boss that he has 'a friend on the Harvard faculty.' It's redolent of reformers and regulars, the 20th century New York of the 'Three Is' — when Democrats would strive to nominate a ticket that could reflect Ireland, Italy and Israel. But for Cuomo, the past is never dead — it's not even past. Speaking to closely huddled reporters avoiding a summer drizzle outside of Sharpton's Harlem headquarters, Cuomo reminded a young journalist that he had worked on his father's losing mayoral race, a formative campaign in the life of both Cuomos. He had been asked about the biggest surprise in this contest. 'Nothing,' he said with a shrug. 'My father ran for mayor before you were born, 1977,' Cuomo recalled, boasting: 'I know this city like the back of my hand.' Cuomo has long lived in the suburbs and, as governor, in Albany, and he's sensitive about criticisms over his residency. Which may be part of the reason he insists on driving himself around the city in a black Dodge Charger. Yet I didn't think about it again until the following day, which happened to be both Father's Day and what would have been Mario Cuomo's 93rd birthday. Andrew was at his second Black church of the day, and this one was in Jamaica, Queens, his father's hometown. Speaking during the service, and at another one in Brooklyn earlier in the morning, Cuomo said matter-of-factly that he still talks to his deceased father, and in fact his father talks back, and at times they argue. So when I caught up with Cuomo in Queens, I asked what his father would think of his candidacy today. 'Oh, he would think it's exactly right,' said the younger Cuomo. Then he was off to the races in ways that made clear he, too, was still consumed by 2024 and was interested in leading his party's recovery. 'Donald Trump, we lost to Donald Trump, 500,000 fewer Democrats turned out' in New York, he said by way of explaining why his dad would approve of his bid. The party, Cuomo said, had lost too much of its working-class base. ''What are you going to do for me?' It has to be real, it has to be tangible,' he said, articulating what those voters expect and arguing he fits the bill because of his record of results. A record, he argued, which includes his performance on Covid-19. Cuomo said the idea that his effort on the pandemic is a blemish is '100 percent wrong' and called the coverage of deaths in nursing homes 'all created for New York Post readers.' He was full of swagger, even insisting on going off the record a couple of times as though he was still in Albany telephoning the tabloids to steer their coverage. The previous night, at a rally in Manhattan, Ocasio-Cortez had said Cuomo was only running for mayor to run for president in 2028. What say you, I asked. 'I'm doing this for this,' he said of the mayor's race. He then talked about the importance of focusing on the here and now, but in the process unfurled his resume, recalling his service as HUD secretary and even claiming, without mentioning the election, that he had been 'on the short list for vice-president.' Sounding like a Queens Sun Tzu, Cuomo said: 'If you are watching the step ahead, you'll trip on this step, I believe that.' It was all a non-answer that pointed at his obvious ambition, quest for redemption and, perhaps, the chance to succeed at what his father never dared to try. 'You think you're going to get a different answer?' when I tried once more. 'You think this is my first rodeo?' I was reminded that it's very much not a bit later, after Cuomo was reunited with all three of his daughters that Father's Day Sunday. They stood behind him outside the church in Queens, and their dad's mood brightened with their presence as he addressed a handful of reporters and photographers. Were they happy he was back in the political fray, I asked? Each of them took their turn speaking with pride about their father, and Cuomo beamed. He also recognized something else: This was a moment that should be captured. He gestured to an aide, but the staffer didn't initially get the message. So the aide walked over to the former governor as the girls spoke. The staffer leaned in and Cuomo whispered: 'Film it.' Forty-eight years later, he still thought like the operative he had been on his dad's mayoral campaign. I should talk a bit about the state of the city. This is one of those moments when perception is at odds with the statistics. As with so many American cities, New York has entered what I call the post-post-Covid moment. While it didn't suffer the spike in carjackings as other parts of the country did — the city's geographic and population density is a natural prophylactic — New York had its troubles during and immediately after the pandemic. There were abhorrent crimes on the subway and there are still nuisance matters, such as the toothpaste and shampoo being behind a locked window at the drugstore. Still, Adams is going to preside over a historic plunge in violent crime. The first five months of this year brought the lowest number of shootings and homicides in recorded New York City history. There's a noticeably increased police presence, particularly on the subways, where Hochul has state authority and intervened. Coming out of the Washington Square station one afternoon this month, I counted six uniformed city cops underground. Much of Manhattan feels like a summer playground, downtown for those under 40 (or under 40 at heart) and the Upper East and West sides for those middle-aged (or still so at heart). 'As for people who are like, 'the city is crumbling,' try getting into a restaurant,' de Blasio told me over a pesto bagel near his Brooklyn home. And yet the most recent Marist survey of the city's voters found that 77 percent believed New York is headed in the wrong direction. Part of that can be attributed to embarrassment over Adams' saga in addition to lingering quality-of-life concerns, less fear of being shot and more unease with the mentally ill homeless person muttering to you. Recalling what police commissioner Bill Bratton once told him, de Blasio said: 'We have to separate crime and order, but the public doesn't.' However, the city's discontents also center on something else, which has been the heartbeat of Mamdani's campaign — affordability. For all his nifty videos and quick-on-the-draw wit, Mamdani wouldn't be giving Cuomo such a race had the assemblymember not harnessed such a galvanizing issue. His calls for a rent freeze and broader lament about the costs of living in New York are what vaulted him into contention and have made him a progressive phenomenon, particularly with young voters. 'Mamdani understood that he was never going to own the crime issue. He was for defund, but he could own affordability, and that's where he planted his flag early,' said Howard Wolfson, a longtime Bloomberg adviser and shrewd student of the city's politics. 'And as crime has come down, the issue of affordability has risen and it turns out it was the smart play.' Odd as it may sound, affordability was a luxury issue that became more resonant once people feared less for their personal safety. In the weeks leading up to the mayoral primary, one could be forgiven for thinking that Mamdani was the only candidate in the race, at least away from a TV set where Cuomo and his allies are carpet-bombing their young rival. To walk around the city is to see mostly Mamdani signs, pamphlets and canvassers. Strolling from Sharpton's 145th St. office 35 blocks down to Central Park North, I ran into three sets of Mamdani volunteers, all of them clearly under 50. Along the way, I popped into the Frederick E. Samuel Community Democratic Club, one of Harlem's old Black clubhouses, and the conversation quickly turned to Mamdani's appeal with young voters. Maurice Cummings, who's an aide to a Democratic assemblymember, recalled a recent gathering Mamdani had in Harlem. 'The thing that I find interesting is that he's crossing racial lines, the place was filled with Black, white, Indian, Puerto Rican,' said Cummings, who's 52. 'I would probably have been one of the oldest folks there.' I caught a glimpse of this dynamic on the corner of 155th and Broadway in Washington Heights, where Mamdani held a press conference on Father's Day afternoon. While he addressed the cameras, a small group of New Yorkers reflecting his base gathered to greet him and offer their support. There was the post-collegiate white guy, still wearing his backpack with a Notre Dame logo, a trans person thanking him for supporting trans rights, a fellow graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and a young Jewish voter lamenting the line of questioning Mamdani, who's Muslim, had received on Jewish-related issues. What there wasn't was any older Black people (except for the one who drove by, leaned out the window and told Mamdani to take his campaign 'to the projects'). It was a similar demographic the previous night, when Mamdani held a packed rally at an event space in one of Manhattan's old piers. One of the loudest cheers of the night was when a city councilor called to 'Free Palestine,' electrifying an audience more bougie than Bronx. The only Black people there over 40 I could find were working security. Walking with Mamdani down Broadway after his press conference the next day, I asked how he could avoid the fate of other progressive candidates in Democratic primaries who couldn't expand their coalition beyond young and non-Black voters. He said he was heartened by how far he had come — he had been in two Black churches himself that morning — but it was easy to pick up traces of wishing he had more time. 'One of the greatest challenges has been having to introduce myself, because when we started this race, one percent of New Yorkers knew who I was,' Mamdani told me, adding that he believes his affordability message 'resonates' but 'the question is whether we can share it with as many people as possible.' As with Cuomo, though for far less time, Mamdani worked in politics a bit before taking the plunge himself as a candidate. So for all his progressive proposals, there's also a hunger to win and an inevitable tension between principle and politics. Some of Mamdani's own advisers are eager for him to assure more moderate New Yorkers that he won't revert to his defund-the-police calls from the Black Lives Matter era. The easiest way to do that would be to signal he'd retain Jessica Tisch, the popular police commissioner, heiress and good news story of the otherwise cringey Adams administration. 'I would consider doing so,' he said, praising Tisch's efforts to root out corruption. Mamdani wouldn't go any further, though, saying 'these conversations are ones that I will engage in after the primary.' Of course, that may be too late. He had said at his rally the night before that 'the days of moral victories are over,' but Mamdani is self-aware enough to know how far he's come in his first citywide race — and that this won't be his last campaign. 'As a Muslim democratic socialist, I am no stranger to bad PR,' he joked. And after I asked him about the three rings he wears and wondered where he was hiding his Bowdoin class ring, he shot back: 'That's for the re-elect.'