New York prison system struggles with strike amid outrage over high-profile inmate deaths

New York State’s corrections department is struggling to keep striking officers on the job, as it grapples with the fallout from two high-profile inmate deaths and reports of violence at the hands of its own workers.

New York state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision is struggling to keep striking officers on the job, as it grapples with the fallout from two high-profile inmate deaths and reports of violence at the hands of its workers. State police are investigating the death of 22-year-old inmate Messiah Nantwi, who was housed at Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, about 50 miles east of Syracuse. Authorities have not released a cause of death, but The New York Times reported that nine prisoners said the inmate had been brutally beaten by corrections officers. Eleven staff members have been placed on administrative leave pending the investigation, the state said Monday. Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday that the “deeply troubling” incident is under investigation, and State Department of Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martuscello III described Nantwi’s death as a tragedy. But others say his death is the latest consequence of a broken prison system. The incident “underscores the inherent culture of staff violence that pervades New York’s prisons, and the urgent need for transparency, accountability, and reform,” the Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit law firm that represents low-income New Yorkers, said in a statement Monday. Nantwi’s death comes less than two weeks after six New York prison workers were charged with murder in connection with the death of Robert Brooks, a 43-year-old Black man who died in December after being beaten by corrections officers at Marcy Correctional Facility, less than a mile from Mid-State.