Creates the office of the correctional ombudsman

Section 27 provides an effective date.

Justification

The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has come under increased public scrutiny in the last few years. The union for correctional officers, NYSCOBA, claims that assaults on staff are rising steadily, and our state prisons are becoming more violent. The FBI recently opened an investigation into the severe beating of an inmate whose eye sockets were broken by correctional officers at Downstate Correctional Facility. Two security staff members at Greene Correctional Facility were fired after arranging for an inmate who had lodged complaints against them to be beaten up in the shower and then covering up the attack. The incident was investigated by the State Inspector General because the DOCCS Inspector General was forced to step down after being accused of sexual harassment of a staff member as part of a broader pattern of harassment that went on for years. In April 2015, two inmates, Samuel Harrell and Karl Taylor, were killed in separate altercations with security staff at Fishkill and Sullivan Correctional Facilities. In June 2015, two inmates escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Dannemora, New York, near the Canadian border. The inmates received tools and information aiding in their escape from a correctional officer and a civilian correctional employee who had a prior complaint lodged against her for having an inappropriate relationship with one of the inmates. That complaint was internally investigated and dismissed by the Department. The inmate involved was not even transferred out of Clinton, but kept working with the same civilian employee in the tailor shop. Although one of the escapees was shot dead by the border patrol, the other inmate was captured. He told investigators that they had spent several months preparing for the escape, sawing through their cell walls at night and exploring the heating and sewer systems in order to find a route out of the prison. Security is supposed to conduct hourly bed checks of inmates. After the escape, inmates from Clinton complained of retaliation against many inmates in the same housing block as the escapees, including inability to communicate with family members, transfer to solitary confinement cells, deprivation of food, medicine and personal property, harassment, threats and beatings to extract information.

It is difficult to evaluate or understand what is happening behind prison walls. The State Inspector General and the Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs do not, with limited exceptions, have jurisdiction over the prison system. State police are sometimes called in when DOCCS believes a crime has been committed, but usually only when inmates are alleged to have committed a crime, not when staff may have acted illegally. Currently, DOCCS maintains its own investigative body, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), to investigate grievances and unusual incidents, among other issues. There is an inherent conflict of interest in having DOCCS staff investigate incidents involving correctional employees. DOCCS investigators, most of whom are former or current security staff, are not impartial or unbiased, nor is it reasonable to expect them to be so given the very polarized atmosphere of some prisons in which both inmates and staff feel unsafe.

This bill would not force DOCCS to stop investigating unusual incidents in its prisons, it would simply create an independent public oversight agency, the office of the correctional ombudsman, to monitor the prisons, investigate complaints and report to the governor, the legislature, DOCCS and the public. The goal of this legislation is to achieve transparency, fairness, impartiality and accountability in our state correctional system. Many other states and countries have ombudsman or inspector generals who remain outside of the correctional department and who work with its staff to create safer and more humane prisons. The Inspector General of the California prison system says that the role of his office is to be a guide dog, not an attack dog, they only bark when the department steps off the sidewalk. That is the role envisioned for the Office of the Correctional Ombudsman; to solve problems, provide transparency and make recommendations to the Department.

Fiscal implications

To be determined

Local fiscal implications

None

Effective date

This act shall take effect one year after it shall have become law.