New York’s prison system has failed to fire nearly all guards accused of assaulting detainees. The Marshall Project investigation found that guards often worked in teams to cover up attacks by lying to investigators and official reports.
Reporter investigates how New York disciplines guards for misbehavior. Using the public records law, we get a database of disciplinary records that state law has kept secret for decades. Here are five takeaways from our investigation — based on our analysis of that database, thousands of pages of documents, several videos, and extensive interviews with prisoners, officials, and experts.
New York’s disciplinary system favors prison officers.
For 12 years, the New York Department of Corrections has tried to fire the agency’s officers or directors who have been accused of abusing inmates or covering up misconduct in more than 290 cases. But in only 10 percent of those cases, the officers were fired. This is despite the agency classifying the employees as a threat to prison security. Some officials retired or resigned, but the vast majority managed to keep their jobs.
For example, a guard who was attempted to be fired by the state 3 times in three years for excessive use of force; a police officer who beat a prisoner with a baton 35 times; Wound.
Guards union contracts require that any efforts to fire an officer be subject to outside arbitrators who have the final say on whether a guard is out of a job. In abuse cases, arbitrators ruled in favor of the officers three out of four times. Arbitrators often say the state’s evidence is insufficient or find the prisoner’s testimony unconvincing.
The union, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association said officers are entitled to due process and that the few responsible for wrongdoing should be held accountable.
In many cases of serious abuse, officials did not attempt to discipline the alleged officer.
The Marshall Project identified more than 160 lawsuits in which, as a result of court orders or settlements, the state paid compensation to people who alleged that guards mistreated them. The department did not attempt to discipline officers in 88 percent of cases, including cases in which inmates were permanently injured or even killed, records show.
Examples include a prisoner whose description of being beaten by police was so strong that a jury awarded him $1 million; a judge called it the “worst case of excessive force” she had ever seen in her career. In another case, the state agreed to pay $5 million to the family of a man killed by police for allegedly refusing to clear his cell. In neither incident, the agency attempted to discipline officials.
A culture of cover-ups among guards makes it difficult to hold them accountable.
Guards often worked in teams to cover up violent attacks by lying to investigators and official reports, records show. Police then filed charges accusing the inmates of beating them.
The department also accused them of covering up the facts, often in concert, in three quarters of abuse cases in which managers tried to fire officials. The department has attempted to discipline guards for incidents in which one or more accused of abuse and others falsely claimed to have concealed it, bringing cases on average every two months for more than 12 years.
Of the roughly 160 lawsuits we reviewed, roughly half of the inmates complained that guards retaliated against them by filing false assault charges and confining them in solitary confinement following a violent incident.
A strong union of correctional officers protects the disciplinary process.
A key reason prison officials found it difficult to get rid of their guards was the contract the state signed with the officers’ union in 1972. The agreement places the final decision on firing an officer to arbitrators hired by unions and the state — A system that unions successfully retained in later contracts. Only a court can overturn an arbitration decision.
The union has significant political influence, especially in the rural communities where the prison and its staff are located. It has protected members’ jobs even as the number of people incarcerated in New York has nearly halved since 2010 and the state has closed two dozen prisons.
Our investigations capture only a fraction of the abused prisoners.
Experts said the records reviewed for this investigation may reflect only a portion of the violence committed by guards in New York’s correctional system. Many prisoners do not file complaints because they fear reprisals or not being believed. Officers at most of the state’s 44 prisons do not wear body cameras, which can sometimes help demonstrate abuse.
Learn more about how the state failed to fire guards accused of abuse and how guards covered up attacks. Find out how we conduct our investigations and tell us about your experience working inside a prison.
credit
for the marshall plan
Reporting by Alysia Santo, Joseph Neff, Tom Meagher and Ilica Mahajan.
Data review by Peter Buffo, Andrew Rodriguez Calderón, Carla Canning, Liset Cruz, David Eads, Ariel Goodman, Geoff Hing, Weihua Li, and Ilica Mahajan.
Illustration by Dion MBD.
Photos by DeSean McClinton-Holland, Joshua Rashaad McFadden, Heather Ainsworth and Alysia Santo.
Designed and developed by Bo-Won Keum, Katie Park and Andrew Rodriguez Calderon.
Art direction and photo editing by Bo-Won Keum and Celina Fang.
Ghazala Irshad Copy-editing.
Audience interaction for Ashley Dye.
Nicole Lewis’ engagement report.
Edited by Leslie Eaton and Manuel Torres.
for the new york times
Video of Jeesoo Park.
Photo editing by Jeffrey Furticella.
Copy-editing by Ellen Tumpossky.
Audience Engagement by Jennie Coughlin.
Edited by Michael LaForgia and Kirsten Danis.