Prisons In New York Are Becoming More Violent

Aside from losing your freedom, prison also has a real threat of violence. In many, if not most prisons, there are gangs that are often beefing with each other. The threat could come from an individual who wants your commissary or doesn't like you. How safe are the prisons in New York State? Is there a real threat of violence?

One thing New York's prison bureau doesn't seem to include in its monthly and annual reports on assaults is how many prisoners are assaulted by staff. The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision is charged with the "care, custody, and treatment of individuals sentenced to state prison."

However, an incarcerated individual, Robert Brooks, was violently beaten by corrections officers at the Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The assault they inflicted on him was beyond disgusting. Brooks died on December 10, 2024. It's hard not to imagine how much of this behavior goes unrecorded in New York prisons. According to the New York Times,

"Three of the 13 guards implicated in the savage beating of Robert Brooks had been accused in lawsuits of earlier attacks in New York prisons."

Those incidents left one of the victims disfigured and another in a wheelchair. Apparently, those assaults were not severe enough for the corrections officers to be fired.

Credit: PBS NewsHour via Youtube

Because of the balance of power, if there is a culture of violence among the staff at a particular facility, it may not be exposed or reported beyond the prison's walls. But there isn't just staff on inmate violence to worry about.

New York has a total of 13 maximum security prisons. These are the facilities that hold the most violent offenders, like murderers.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a maximum-security prison is "a type of prison where prisoners have the least amount of freedom because they are considered dangerous and are not trusted not to escape."

The prison in New York with the most killers is Green Haven Correctional Facility, which is a facility for males only located in Dutchess County. There are 744 total murderers at the prison - 552 - Murder and 192 - Manslaughter.

READ MORE: 7 Prisons In New York With The Most Murderers

The most confiscated weapons in New York State prisons are cutting instruments. There were 593 cutting instruments confiscated in 2023.

While there has been a reduction in the overall number of inmates in New York, also resulting in the closures of prisons, there seems to be an uptick in violence. The number of assaults on staff and assaults on incarcerated individuals has increased each year since 2019 (except for 2021*).

Assaults on Staff Statewide:

2019 - 1,043
2020 - 1,052
2021 - 1,177
2022 - 1,473
2023 - 1,672
2024 - 1,938

Assaults on Incarcerated Individuals Statewide:

2019 - 1,267
2020 - 1,206
2021 - 1,108*
2022 - 1,489
2023 - 2,113
2024 - 2,697

READ MORE: 7 New York Prisons Had The Most Weapons Confiscated

The data above doesn't specify if there was a physical injury or not. The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision report does include a note:

"Unlike the Penal Law where physical injury is a required element, any attack by an incarcerated individual is classified by DOCCS as an assault. This includes events where no physical injury occurs and events where any object, including a small object, is thrown at and hits another person. By contrast, in the Penal Law, an assault requires physical injury, which means impairment of physical condition or substantial pain."

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