By Robert Gavin at Buffalo News
Jun 1, 2025
ALBANY – In the five months after prison officers beat 43-year-old Robert Brooks to death in
Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County, the state’s Commission on Correction, an
oversight panel for New York’s prisons and jails, convened before the public for a combined total
of less than 51 minutes.
Including the commission’s time in executive session, which the public cannot view on the SCOC
website, the seven meetings totaled three hours and three minutes.
And the public portions included zero references to the Dec. 10 death of Brooks or Messiah
Nantwi, 22, a man that officers fatally beat on March 1 in Mid-State Correctional Facility,
located next to Marcy, or to any deaths behind bars. Nor did meetings include any mention of
the statewide 22-day correction officer strike that rocked the state’s prison system between
February and March – a walkout that quickly forced Gov. Kathy Hochul to call in the National
Guard to help secure the state’s 42 prison facilities. Instead, the focus of SCOC meetings seemed
fixated on variances and building construction-related topics.
With less than a month remaining in the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers are questioning the
future role of the SCOC amid proposals to overhaul the state’s prison system. On May 20, the
Senate passed a bill 40-21 to expand the SCOC from three gubernatorial-appointed members to
nine members. The six additional panelists would include four members appointed by the
Legislature and two by the Correctional Association of New York, a private watchdog group.
The SCOC presently includes chair Allen Riley and Commissioners Yolanda Canty and Elizabeth
Gaynes. Riley, a former Madison County sheriff, earned $175,911 in 2024. Canty, a former
bureau chief with the New York City Department of Correction, earned $165,774. And Gaynes, a
one-time Buffalo defense attorney confirmed to her post in June 2024, earned $88,541,
according to public payroll records on the SeeThroughNY site.
“The status quo of just three commissioners and a skeleton crew lacks the capacity to fulfill the
SCOC’s obligations,” said the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Julia Salazar, a Brooklyn Democrat who chairs
the Senate’s Committee on Crime Victims, Crime and Correction. “Shock and outrage in
response to the violence and death in New York’s prisons is not enough. This is a crisis that
demands meaningful action.”
The SCOC, founded in 1895, underwent changes following the 1971 riots at Attica prison, where
43 lives were lost, including 11 officers and employees. The oversight panel, which has power to
close facilities, said on its website that it “strives to provide a safe, stable and humane
correctional system and ensure the delivery of essential services in the correctional setting.”
It said the SCOC meets monthly and as needed to “discuss matters related to local and state
correction facilities and police department lockups, including variances, maximum facility
capacity, proposed changes in regulations, construction projects, and mortality investigations,
among other matters.”
In December, the SCOC criticized the Erie County Holding Center over the 2022 deaths of Sean
C. Riordan and William B. Henley. It asked the Erie County Legislature to review the SCOC’s
findings and hold an inquiry into the fitness of the county jail’s designated health services
provider. While serving as chair of the Erie County Legislature, now-Sen. April Baskin,
D-Buffalo, held such a hearing.
Baskin said her experience with the SCOC was disappointing. After it informed her that inmate
India Cummings’ death in 2016 was the result of officer negligence, she requested more
information from the agency without success. Baskin said SCOC’s report to the Legislature was
redacted, and that commission administrators declined to participate in any formal legislative
meetings. She said she offered to have a closed session in executive session to help county
lawmakers understand the findings of the SCOC investigation. That, she noted, was met with no
response.
“The COC has not been responsive, nor do they provide any clarity after reports are issued, nor
are they readily accessible to help solve the matters that have been uncovered,” Baskin said.
“That lack of transparency places elected officials and municipal administrators in a difficult
position to implement the needed reforms. We are at a pivotal moment with statewide jail
reform. Those very reforms will also protect the hardworking jail deputies and corrections
officers as well as the individuals in custody.”
At a May 14 hearing, when Salazar and Assembly Member Erik Martin Dilan, DBrooklyn, who
chairs the Assembly’s Corrections Committee, held a discussion on the “Safety of Persons in
Custody, Transparency and Accountability Within State Correctional Facilities,” the SCOC had
no visible presence. Both Salazar and Dilan said they wished someone from the SCOC appeared
in person. Riley submitted written testimony that the commission’s oversight activity is limited
to investigation of deaths by a medical review board, the review and approval of
construction/renovations and handling some 1,000 complaint letters from inmates and their
families and friends. He said that has been the case since SCOC “incurred significant personnel
reductions in the mid-199os,” which reduced staff below levels needed for inspections.
Riley said that following a later state comptroller report that criticized SCOC for not evaluating
DOCCS facilities, the State Legislature amended the law so SCOC did not need to inspect every
correctional facility in New York but follow a schedule that considers available resources,
workload and staffing. Riley said the state’s recently enacted $254 billion budget included
funding – $2.5 million – that will allow SCOC to annually inspect each location and have a
website to receive electronically submitted Complaints.
“Recent events, including tragic incidents, have underscored the urgent need for enhanced
oversight of DOCCS facilities,” Riley said.
Western New York’s Senate delegation was divided on whether expanding the SCOC was a
solution. Baskin and Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo, voted yes. Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt,
R-North Tonawanda and Sens. Patrick Gallivan, R-Elma; George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay; and
Thomas O’Mara, R-Big Flats, all voted no.
In a statement, Ortt said the commission “has not addressed any major issues that have recently
happened in our prison system.”
Gallivan, a former Erie County sheriff whose office ran the Erie County jail and represents a
district that now includes Collins and Wende correctional facilities, said SCOC is not fulfilling its
original intended role. But he said it is woefully understaffed and under-resourced. If the SCOC
had its resources, he said he did not believe the state would be experiencing surging increases in
prison violence (between 2020 and 2024, inmate-on-staff assaults have increased in DOCCS
from 1,052 to 2,069, and inmate-on-inmate assaults rose from 1,206 to 2,980).
Twenty officers have been charged with murder and manslaughter in the Brooks and Nantwi
deaths.
Assembly Member Patrick Chludzinski, R-Cheektowaga, said the prison system, following an
“extremely chaotic state for the last six months or more,” needs a complete overhaul. The SCOC
has proved incapable of fulfilling that responsibility, he said.
“The fact that the state Commission of Correction has only met for 52 minutes (publicly)
throughout this turmoil and failed to address any of the crises that have been occurring speaks
volumes about how ineffective it truly is.”
SCOC’s meeting on Dec. 18, its first after the Brooks’ killing, was public for 7 minutes and 22
seconds. The agenda included variances for detention areas, construction and renovation and
executive session, which brought the total time of the meeting to 18 minutes. None of the
following six meetings through the end of April exceeded even 14 minutes of public discussion.
The longest gathering – if one included executive session – lasted an hour and 20 minutes on
March 26. But the public could only view 4 minutes and 14 seconds of it. That was the month
when Nantwi was killed and in which the strike ended.
The commission’s most recent meeting, on May 28, lasted 1 minute and 39 seconds before the
public. After the meeting, Assembly Member Emily Gallagher, D-Brooklyn, who is
co-sponsoring the bill with Salazar to expand the SCOC to nine members, joined advocates with
the Katal Center for Equity, Health and Justice in slamming the SCOC for its short public
meeting.
“This watchdog is a lapdog right now,” Gallagher said. “This is a state agency that is currently
not functioning.”
SCOC spokesperson Kirstan Conley said the public meetings on the commission’s website
represent only a fraction of the work by agency staff.
“The commission enters executive session during its meetings to review mortality investigations,
which involve confidential medical and mental health treatment information, and correctional
facility renovation and construction projects, which detail facility design and specifications,”
Conley said. “Revealing details of facilities’ plans and specifications can compromise security
and public safety for incarcerated individuals, staff, visitors and others. For that reason, they are
not publicly disclosed or specifically described in public documents.”
The SCOC’s 2023 annual report identified SCOC as an executive branch-level correctional
oversight and technical services agency. The top of listed duties stated: “Advising the governor
on correctional policy.”
The report stated: “In summary, the commission is a small, specialized criminal justice service
agency supporting the statewide correctional community, working on behalf of the governor to
professionalize and enhance the quality of the correctional system in New York.”
On May 20, when Hochul met with the editorial board of The Buffalo News, she was asked about
the SCOC, its meetings and the absence of any references to fatalities or the strike. Hochul said
the SCOC was “more exterior than us, set up by the Legislature to be sort of a watchdog. I don’t
control what they do. I control what DOCCS does directly and they are under orders from me to
find a path forward.”
Pressed that the SCOC was, in fact, an executive branch agency, Hochul said: “I don’t deal with
them. I deal with the commissioner and (state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency
Services) Jackie Bray … and they’re the ones that I’m working on policy with for reform.”
Matthew Janisziewski, a spokesperson for the governor said: “Gov. Hochul was referring to the
fact that the Executive Chamber allows SCOC to investigate without interference from the
executive. To maintain the integrity of SCOC investigations, it would be inappropriate for the
governor to direct them to take specific actions related to specific cases.