The murder of Robert Brooks in December of 2024 shook the state’s prison system – and it was, perhaps, confirmation of a belief many had whispered to me in the past: New York State’s prisons were chaotic, violent and deserving of a closer look.
As NY1’s investigative reporter, I have always followed closely what happens on Rikers Island, our city’s jail system, but we as a station based in New York City had not delved deeply into the state’s prison system. It’s a fact of proximity – the majority of state prisons are not in our coverage area here in the five boroughs.
But the inmate population may be – so many of the detainees on Rikers Island end up serving their sentences “upstate” (the common colloquialism for heading to state prison).
So, following the death of Brooks, I submitted multiple freedom of information law requests asking for data and statistics on violence – how often force was being used against the inmates themselves? And how often were those officers disciplined for that violence? The state took about nine months to respond…