Clay Parker says he was beaten in a shower at Greene Correctional Facility in 2023.
It was the officers who did it, he said.
What You Need To Know
Clay Parker says he was beaten in a shower at Greene Correctional Facility in 2023. It was the officers who did it, he said
Parker was serving 25 to life for murder, entering the system in 2004. He was released in September 2025
The attack years earlier, he said, happened because he sat the wrong way in his chair during a search of his dorm
“Kicking me, punching me,” he told NY1 on a recent visit to his home in Albany. “I’m handcuffed behind my back, so I had no way of blocking my face, no way of protecting my body, and then they picked me up and ran my face into the door of the van. It was just beatings.”
Clay Parker says he was beaten in a shower at Greene Correctional Facility in 2023. (Spectrum News NY1)
Parker was serving 25 to life for murder, entering the system in 2004. He was released in September 2025.
The attack years earlier, he said, happened because he sat the wrong way in his chair during a search of his dorm.
“They told me to go to the shower area in the bathroom,” Parker said. “She was like, ‘Didn’t I tell you to sit straight in your chair?’ And I was like, ‘I have issues. I don’t like people behind me.’ And she was like, ‘Pshhhh,’” Parker recounted, showing how he was then smacked in the face.
He says he was beaten first in the shower area, later moved outside and continually assaulted there while he was handcuffed. He says his face was smashed into a transport van.
Parker admits at one point that he spat on an officer.
His face was swollen and bloody. He needed surgery to repair his orbital bone.
His tooth is still chipped.
“I still get migraine headaches,” Parker said. “I can’t be in the sun all day. I still deal with this.”
NY1 sat down with Parker at his home in Albany, along with his sister and his attorney.
He is suing the officers for the alleged attack.
“It’s actually one I’ve heard many times of similar situations, of these excessive uses of force, serious injuries and nothing being done about it,” said his attorney, Danielle Muscatello of the firm Barket Epstein Kearon Aldea & LoTurco.
After the incident, Parker was disciplined for assaulting correction staff, having a weapon and other misconduct. False accusations, he said. He was sent to solitary confinement for months, he added.
A department spokesman would not answer any questions related to Parker’s accusations, citing pending litigation.
But his injuries are part of a pattern of escalating violence in state prisons over the last 10 years.
Years that have been turbulent and chaotic.
Correction officers accused of murdering two incarcerated individuals — one in 2024 and another in 2025.
Last year, about 10,000 correction officers walked off the job in protest in an illegal, unauthorized wildcat strike.
NY1 has been investigating the state prison system for months, finding that the system is riddled with accusations of violence and abuse, wrought by a crisis — one it is still attempting to crawl out of.
Through the state’s Freedom of Information Law, NY1 obtained data showing use of force incidents by correction staff have more than doubled from 2015 to 2024 — the last complete year data was given to NY1.
Assaults against correction staff increased by 52% from 2021 to 2025. Attacks against incarcerated individuals by other people in custody during that time climbed 140%. Overall, showing a system spiraling to control violence.
Data shows increases in assaults on correction staff and attacks against incarcerated individuals by other people in recent years. (Spectrum News NY1)
Correction officials say they are starting to turn things around.
In a statement to NY1, a spokesman for the department said: “Last year, the Commissioner set clear goals to reduce violence within our correctional facilities, and we are pleased to report that we have seen significant reductions in assaults on staff and assaults on incarcerated, exceeding our 2025 goals. In 2025, there was a 14% reduction in assaults on staff, an 11% reduction in assaults on incarcerated individuals, and a 42% reduction in excessive force allegations.”
“I think prisons are in a state of protracted crisis,” said Jennifer Scaife, who leads the Correctional Association of New York, which is charged with oversight of these state facilities.
She visits them on a regular basis.
“These conditions are stemming from the unauthorized strike that concluded just about a year ago, but the groundwork was already there in the months leading up due to longstanding staffing challenges and longstanding culture issues in the prisons,” Scaife said.
Following the deaths of Messiah Nantwi in 2025 and Robert Brooks in 2024 — both beaten by correction officers, drawing international attention to the state system — critics were quick to blame the officers themselves for a culture of violence and racism.
The union contract, which expired last month, often requires independent arbitration when an officer is accused of misconduct, making it difficult, critics say, to terminate even bad apples.
According to exclusive data provided to NY1, in 2025, the state corrections department tried to discipline 80 officers for inmate abuse. But after this arbitration process with the union, only four staff members were terminated.
In thousands of pages of those arbitration decisions obtained by NY1 over the last 10 years, you can see officers have been accused of choking an inmate and beating them repeatedly, including while handcuffed. They kept their jobs.
In a statement, a spokesman for the department said: “The Commissioner will not tolerate violence in our system. Those that engage in misconduct will be disciplined and if warranted, referred for outside prosecution.”
He added that the department is bound by the terms of its collective bargaining agreement.
“We have to have the lawmakers listen to all the issues that are going on,” said Chris Summers, president of the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, which represents 13,500 officers and sergeants in the state prison system. “And we need them to help fix the problems that we have, the issues with the violence, and the long hours. There is no work-life balance for the officers and sergeants. You are working all the time. You are never home.”
The head of the union contends that new laws limiting solitary confinement are what increased violence.
“Part of the reason why everything is up, violence is up, there [are] no more repercussions anymore for the bad acts,” Summers told NY1 in his office in Albany. “Any kind of violent act you have, you’re only going 15 days into the special housing unit.”
Consequences, others say, are hard to come by in state prison.
“It [isn’t] the first time I have been assaulted by officers,” Parker said. “It’s been going on for years. It happens, it massively happens in there. Now it’s getting exploited. Now people are going to see what’s going on in real life. But this has been going on and no one has been doing [anything] about it.”
In the alleged beating of Parker, it is unclear whether the officers were disciplined. The department declined to answer that question.