BLUEPRINT FOR JUSTICE IN NEW YORK PRISONS
AFTER GUARDS KILLED ROBERT BROOKS AND MASSIAH NANTWI AND WENT ON A 22-DAY WILDCAT STRIKE, THIS IS WHAT GOV. KATHY HOCHUL AND THE STATE LEGISLATURE NEED TO DO TO EASE THE ON-GOING CRISIS IN NY'S PRISONS AND MAKE SURE NO ONE ELSE GETS KILLED
Robert Brooks’ advocacy day at the state capital. Jan. 26, 2025. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
MALONE, NEW YORK Jan. 11, 2025 OPINION
With Robert Brooks jr. meeting Gov. Kathy Hochul in Albany Monday morning, and with the last chapter of the Robert Brooks sr. murder case about to be written in a Utica courtroom this week, The Free Lance News figures now is a good time to share its ideas for making sure no one else gets killed.
The plan aims to defuse what everyone agrees is an ongoing crisis in New York's prison system that threatens to explode in a riot or takeover at any moment.
The Free Lance News is in a position to offer real solutions because we covered Brooks' murder from the start and repeatedly broke important news about the case and its aftermath. We talked to scores of guards, ex-guards, prisoners, ex-prisoners, male and female, family and friends of both guards and prisoners, state officials, advocates, experts, everyone, about Brooks' killing and the chronic problems every single one of New York's 42 state prisons is facing.
We approached the problem with an independence befitting a professional journalist. We also approached it with a pragmatic eye looking for not just solutions that would help but for solutions that were consistent with the best American ideals of justice and fair-play. We looked to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Before we offer these solutions its necessary to state what, in our opinion and experience, our year-plus long investigation showed was the likely cause and causes of Brooks' killing. Yes the guards, the killers themselves, are first and foremost responsible. But they worked within a system and that system was so dysfunctional it is almost as responsible for Brooks' killing as the guards who beat him, choked him, looked the other way and even laughed while a defenseless, handcuffed man was tortured and killed in front of them.
The HALT Act contributed to Brooks' killing.
As everyone knows by now, the HALT Act limited prison officials ability to lock people away in solitary confinement for 15 days. That extremely limited time period creates lawlessness within New York's prisons. Female prison guards resort to using gangs to maintain order, as Sherri Abreu, the one who set Brooks' murder in motion, did.
Guards at Marcy controlled the chaos with vigilante justice outside the approved administrative prison disciplinary system. Brooks was literally the victim of modern-day lynching.
He didn't rape a white woman; he openly disobeyed their orders, allegedly.
That HALT is creating a culture of lawlessness in New York's prison was confirmed by three long-serving female prisoners at each of New York's three female prisons we spoke to in December.
To curb this culture of lawlessness and the vigilante death squads it created, Gov. Hochul and the state legislature should together agree to amend—not repeal—the HALT Act to extend the maximum period of solitary confinement to 60 days.
If anything, the current HALT Act’s 15-day limit in adult jails and prisons should be applied instead to New York's juvenile prisons. Youth there are being placed in what amounts to solitary confinement without running water or access to a toilet, according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed last week in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Next, Gov. Hochul should use the power granted her already in last year's budget to close the prison where Brooks was murdered—the Marcy Correctional Facility outside Utica. The place is too broken to fix—as the suicide of the prison's civilian Muslim prayer leader inside the prison showed.
Finally, chronic stress caused by mandatory overtime also undoubtedly contributed to Brooks' killing. A human being forced to work 16 and sometimes even 24 hours cannot be expected to exercise the best judgement. Tempers will get short. Many of the guards who killed Brooks were being forced to work 16 hour shifts.
Today, guards are still being forced to work way too much overtime because they're not enough of them. The National Guard remains deployed in New York's prisons to fill the shortfall—at the cost of as yet untold millions of dollars.
To reduce forced overtime and allow the National Guard to withdraw from New York's prisons, Gov. Hochul and the state legislature need to reduce the number of New Yorkers held in those prisons by enacting new laws that provide additional opportunities for prisoners to obtain release.
Last year, when the scope of the crisis came into view with the 22-day wildcat strike by prison guards, a coalition of formerly-incarcerated civil rights advocates proposed an Action Plan to solve it. That plan remains the best path forward.
The plan proposed "increased and more effective use of administrative and court path-ways already available to New York's incarcerated individuals through which they can seek early release."
Crucially, the plan also included "new opportunities for release to be opened by the enactment of new laws." These include:
1. Elder Parole (S.454/A.514)
To allow older incarcerated adults access to consideration of release after age 55 and having served 15 or more years;
2. Fair and Timely Parole (S.159/A.127)
To require parole applicants be judged based on present-day fitness for parole, not primarily criminal history.
These two bills have more than sufficient support to pass both chambers immediately, and together they will save the state annually $522,000,000, according to a report by Columbia University.
3. Second Look Act (S.158/A.1283)
To allow excessive sentences to be re-considered by judges;
4. Earned Time Act (S.342/A.1085)
To allow people to earn time off their sentences;
5. Marvin Mayfield Act (S.1209/A.1297)
To eliminate mandatory minimum sentences;
6. Treatment Not Jail (S.1976/A.1263)
Finally, Gov. Hochul should consider granting the 2,000 or so guards she fired during the strike amnesty and welcoming them back to work—if they want to return. Presumably, with the HALT Act amended, many of them might. That would not just help ease the crisis, it would help re-set relations with the guards.
Everyone should get a clean slate, not just the prisoners earning early release under the new laws.
For tips or corrections, The Free Lance can be reached at jasonbnicholas@gmail.com or, if you prefer, thefreelancenews@proton.me.