By Jeongyoon Han at WXXI News PR
June 10, 2025
Democrats in the state Senate and Assembly agreed late Monday on a set of prison
reforms that would increase oversight in New York correctional facilities, months after
the beating deaths of Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi at the hands of corrections
officers while incarcerated.
The omnibus bill, which lawmakers hope to pass in both chambers with just days before
the legislative session’s end, is the first major prison accountability bill that is close to a
vote after Brooks’ death last December at Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica.
While Democratic lawmakers are praising the package, the omnibus bill is facing some
criticism from both the left and right.
Several of the measures in the bill come from a larger legislative package that members
of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus introduced last
Thursday.
“The omnibus bill is a great first step,” Melanie Dominguez, director of the Katal Center
for, a criminal justice nonprofit, said at a rally in Albany on Tuesday.
The bill’s provisions include tripling the membership on a state-run prison oversight
body, requiring the state to release of video footage if an incarcerated person dies and a
prison guard is involved, and resolving conflicts of interest when the state Attorney
General investigates deaths in prisons.
But in selecting measures from the caucus’ “Robert Brooks Blueprint for Justice and
Reform,” the omnibus bill that state Democrats backed did not include parole measures
that advocates have campaigned for.
“There is still much more that needs to be done by the legislature on a number of issues,
including parole reform,” Dominguez said. “And we implore the legislature to pass those
bills as well.”
For weeks, criminal justice advocates had pushed for several bills that would expand the
state’s parole and earned time policies — including the Fair and Timely Parole bill, Elder
Parole bill, the Earned Time Act, and the Second Look Act.
The Legal Aid Society, which represents low-income New Yorkers, said in a statement
that lawmakers made a mistake to not include “de-carceration” policies.
The omission of those items, the group wrote, “represents a colossal failure by
lawmakers to meet this moment following the brutal killings of Robert Brooks and
Messiah Nantwi, and the continued suffering of so many of our incarcerated clients
condemned to survive such harsh conditions at these facilities.”
The omnibus bill incorporated several bills that Assemblymember Emily Gallagher, a
Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn, cosponsored – including one that that
would expand the state’s prison oversight body, and another that would require the state
Medical Review Board to receive information following an autopsy of an incarcerated
individual.
But with the bill excluding parole reform proposals, the future of those measures
remains uncertain.
“I would love to see something like a parole bill passed this session, but I do think that if
we play our cards right, there might be an opportunity next year to do that,” Gallagher
said.
State Sen. Mark Walczyk, a Republican from the Watertown area, said several of the
measures in the bill would provide transparency and “answer some of the questions and
concerns that advocates have.”
Walczyk said lawmakers should have included steps to address safety concerns that
corrections officers raised, such as implementing security screenings to prevent illicit
drugs from entering facilities, or a repeal of the HALT Act, which sets limits to the use of
solitary confinement.
State corrections workers engaged in a three-week unsanctioned strike earlier this year
to protest what they said were unsafe conditions in facilities.
“When you look overall at what our correction facilities need right now, this bill does
nothing to improve the situation in our state prison system,” Walczyk said.