BILL NUMBER: S1671
SPONSOR: SALAZAR
 
TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the correction law and the civil service law, in
relation to discipline of certain persons for serious misconduct
 
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
To establish a new and more accountable procedure for making determi-
nations regarding allegations of serious misconduct on the part of NYS
Department of Corrections and Community Supervision ("DOCCS") employees.
 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section 1 adds a new section 12 to the correction law with the following
subsections:
Subsection 1 defines "serious misconduct" as:
-an act of excessive use of force;
-an act of false reporting regarding one or more acts of excessive use
of force;
-an intentional failure to report an act of excessive use of force;
-the introduction of a cellular device, a controlled substance, marijua-
na or any other significantly incapacitating substance to an institution
of DOCCS; or
-an inappropriate sexual relationship or contact with an incarcerated
person or a person under community supervision.
Subsection 2 provides that when a NYS DOCCS employee is alleged to have
committed an act of serious misconduct, the disciplinary procedure that
may be applied shall be the procedure established in this new section 12
of the correction law.
Subsection 3 establishes the categories of employees subject to the
procedure established in this section.
Subsection 4 establishes the disciplinary procedure to be followed when
a covered NYS DOCCS employee is alleged to have engaged in an act of
serious misconduct. Covered employees are afforded full due process
rights in this procedure, including a reasonable period of time to
obtain representation, to be provided with a copy of the charge or
charges, to answer the charge(s) in writing, to summon witnesses on
their behalf, to have a hearing before a hearing officer who shall make
a recommendation to the commissioner who would then make the final
determination, and to receive a transcript of the hearing without
charge. The burden of proof in the hearing shall be on the department.
Subsection 5 states that an employee charged with serious misconduct may
be suspended without pay pending the hearing and determination. This
subsection also lists the range of permissible penalties if an employee
is found to have engaged in an act or acts of serious misconduct.
Subsection 6 provides a right to appeal a finding via the procedure set
forth in Article 76 of the NY Civil Procedure Laws and Rules.
Subsection 7 provides that the commissioner may terminate the employment
of an employee who is convicted of a crime whenever the commissioner
determines the continued employment of such person would not be in the
best interest of the department.
Section 2 adds a new paragraph (i) to civil service law section 50 (4)
adding a new category to the list of individuals whom the state civil
service department or a municipal civil service commission may refuse to
examine, or after examination refuse to certify, specifically, an indi-
vidual who has been disciplined for an act of serious misconduct pursu-
ant to correction law section 12.
Section 3 makes a conforming change to civil service law section 61 (1).
Section 4 amends correction law section 112 (1) to add that the commis-
sioner has authority to place reasonable limits or restrictions on items
an employee may bring into a correctional facility or community super-
vision office that could pose a threat or be used as a weapon.
Section 5 provides for the effective date.
 
JUSTIFICATION:
This bill places final decision-making authority regarding discipline of
DOCCS staff for acts of serious misconduct in the hands of the DOCCS
Commissioner. Currently, such authority rests with outside arbitrators.
Under the existing procedure, DOCCS has rarely been able to terminate a
correction officer DOCCS alleges to have used excessive and unjustified
physical force against an incarcerated person. That is, even when DOCCS
has concluded an employee has violated the law by, for example, using
excessive and unlawful force, they almost always fail to be able to
terminate such an employee. This is an untenable situation.
This bill was first introduced early in 2024. Since that time the neces-
sity of enacting the reforms contained in this bill has become even
clearer. In December 2024 a group of DOCCS staff members at Marcy
Correctional Facility killed Robert Brooks in a vicious beating within
an examination room in the prison infirmary, a beating caught without
the knowledge of the staff members involved on video. The widely shared
video shows multiple officers directly involved in physically attacking
Mr. Brooks, who was handcuffed behind his back and who appears at some
point in the process to be completely nonresponsive. The video also
depicts other staff members, uniformed officers or supervisors as well
as civilian medical personnel, standing by, observing the brutal beat-
ing, and not intervening to stop the attack or to assist Mr. Brooks. In
fact, it appears from the video that none of the DOCCS staff present -
more than a dozen individuals appeared to think anything out of the
ordinary was occurring. That is, they appear to have believed they would
never be held accountable for their actions. Several of the officers who
appear to have been involved in beating Mr. Brooks were already facing
civil legal actions based on allegations of other incidents of excessive
force. This incident raised significant concerns as to how it could be
that state employees could engage in the conduct shown in the Brooks
videos and the incident brought to light the serious failures and inef-
fectiveness of the existing employee disciplinary procedures within
DOCCS. The need for change in regard to staff discipline in DOCCS is
plain and obvious.
This bill was drafted in response to an in-depth investigation by the
Marshall Project regarding the existing disciplinary system for NY's
prison staff. In a series of reports first published in the New York
Times in May 2023 (1), a stark picture emerged of a staff disciplinary
system that is essentially completely broken and ineffective. The Mars-
hall Project found, for example, that over a twelve-year period, DOCCS
"tried to fire officers or supervisors the agency accused of physically
abusing prisoners or covering up their misconduct in 290 cases. But in
only 10% of those cases did the officers get fired." (2)
The existing arbitrator system provides that the union representing an
accused officer essentially has veto power over the selection of the
arbitrator for the case.
As shocking examples of the dysfunction of the existing system, the
Marshall Project reported:
An officer who broke his baton hitting a prisoner 35 times, even after
the man was handcuffed, was not fired. Neither were the guards who beat
a prisoner at Attica Correctional Facility so badly he needed 13 staples
to close gashes in his scalp. Nor were the officers who battered a
mentally ill man, injuring him from face to groin. The man hanged
himself the next day. (3)
The investigation also revealed numerous instances of significant
assaults by staff on incarcerated individuals where DOCCS did not even
charge any officers with misconduct.
This bill, by eliminating the arbitrator system in cases of allegations
of serious misconduct, directly addresses one of the reasons for the
extraordinarily low rate of successful disciplinary cases even when
DOCCS believes there was sezious misconduct. This bill also addresses
the so-called a "blue wall" by which officers protect each other by
either providing false information or simply declining to report abuse
they have witnessed. This is accomplished by the definition in the bill
of "serious misconduct", which includes - in addition to acts of exces-
sive force - an act of false reporting regarding one or more acts of
excessive use of force and an intentional failure to report an act of
excessive use of force.
The failure of the existing staff disciplinary procedure to appropriate-
ly address acts of serious misconduct has far-reaching and devastating
consequences. First, people are injured by this serious misconduct, some
quite severely. Second, the ability of officers to use violence with
impunity has a ripple effect of encouraging more violence from staff and
violence from incarcerated individuals. Third, the existing dysfunction-
al system costs New York State large sums of money in settlements and
court verdicts against DOCCS for excessive and unlawful force by staff
against incarcerated individuals.
Enactment of this bill would be an important step forward in holding
staff accountable if they engage in serious misconduct, in making NY's
prisons safer, in ensuring that the human rights of individuals who are
incarcerated in NY are safeguarded and protected, in helping individuals
engage in positive rehabilitation and transformation while incarcerated,
and in saving the state significant sums of money.
 
SOCIAL JUSTICE IMPACT
A prison system that is unable to hold staff members who engage in seri-
ous misconduct accountable - including those who use excessive force or
fail to report the use of excessive force - is a system that, at least
tacitly, views excessive and unjustified violence by state employees
against individuals who are incarcerated as acceptable. This has a far-
reaching impact, causing immediate harm to individuals, as well as
establishing an atmosphere of lawlessness withing prisons, and subject-
ing individuals and their families to extended trauma. As people of
color continue to be significantly disproportionately represented in the
prison system, this type of governmental official abuse and lack of
accountability hits Black and brown people and communities the hardest.
Enacting this bill would ensure a measure of justice and dignity for
incarcerated individuals and their loved ones.
 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
SENATE:
2024: S8980 (Salazar) - referred to Crime Victims, Crime & Correction
ASSEMBLY: No Same as
 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:
Enactment of this bill will result in significant savings for the State
as the procedures established with this legislation will result in NY's
prisons being safer and in a reduction in the number of successful and
expensive lawsuits against the State based on instances of excessive and
unjustified force by staff against incarcerated individuals.
 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall become effective on the thirtieth day after it shall
become law, provided, however, that section 1 of the act shall take
effect upon the expiration of the current collective bargaining agree-
ment that governs impacted employees of the department.
1 Santo, Neff, and Meagher, "In N.Y. Prisons, Guards Who Brutalize Pris-
oners Rarely Get Fired",
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/nvregion/ny-prison- guards-brutality-
fired.html Neff, Santo, and Meagher, "How a 'Blue Wall' Inside N.Y.
State Prisons Protects Abusive Guards",
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/nyregion/ ny-state-prison-guardsa-
buse.html
Santo and Neff, "A 'Crazy System': How Arbitration Puts Abusive Guards
Back in New York Prisons",
https://nysfocus.com/2023/12/14/arbitration-prison-abuse- corrections-
officers
Santo and Neff, "How We Investigated Abusive Prison Guards Getting Their
Jobs Back in New York",
https://www.themarshallproject.2023/12/14/new-york-prison-guard- arbi-
tration-how-we-investigated
2 Santo and Neff, "We Spent Two Years Investigating Abuse by Prison
Guards in New York. Here are Five Takeaways.",
https://www.themarshaliprojectorg/2023/05/22/new-york-prison- correc-
tions-officer-disciplinefindings
3 Santo, Neff, and Meagher, "In N.Y. Prisons, Guards Who Brutalize Pris-
oners Rarely Get Fired",
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/nvregion/ny-Prison-guards- brutali-
ty-fired.html

Statutes affected:
S1671: 50 civil service law, 50(4) civil service law, 61 civil service law, 61(1) civil service law, 112 correction law, 112(1) correction law