In December 2024, officers at Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica, New York, beat 43-year-old Robert Brooks<\/a> to death in the facility\u2019s infirmary. Brooks was handcuffed with his arms behind him on a medical examination table, body camera footage<\/a> showed, and staff later filed false reports of their use of force. After an attorney general investigation jurors charged six officers with murder, three with manslaughter for failing to intervene and one with evidence tampering. He cleaned bloodstains from the scene.<\/p>\n Brooks was serving a 12-year sentence after pleading guilty to first-degree assault. His death sparked outrage and state officials retained WilmerHale to review Department of Corrections procedures and identify systemic problems.<\/p>\n Of the 10 guards indicted in February 2025, seven have now\u00a0pleaded guilty<\/a>\u00a0to manslaughter or lesser charges. One was convicted of murder, and two were acquitted in a fall trial. Three more guards agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges in return for cooperating with prosecutors. Several face lengthy prison terms.<\/p>\n Several months after Brooks\u2019 death, in February 2025, correction officers began an illegal strike protesting unsafe conditions, excessive hours and new restrictions on solitary confinement.<\/p>\n on March 1, 2025, during the three-week strike, correction officers beat to death another incarcerated man, 22-year-old Messiah Nantwi, at Mid-State Correctional Facility \u2014\u00a0part of the same upstate prison \u201chub\u201d that includes the Marcy facility.<\/p>\n Nantwi, who struggled with mental illness and had been taking a shower during a \u201ccount\u201d by National Guardsman called in to fill staffing gaps, \u201cbegged the officers to stop and screamed incoherently until he eventually fell silent,\u201d experts wrote in the WilmerHale report.<\/p>\n Then they beat him two more times, in a stairwell and in an infirmary holding cell, before leaving him unattended for several minutes. He died of traumatic brain injuries as a result of violent blows to his head, suffering at least 69 other serious blows to his body.<\/p>\n Ten officers were charged in the killing of Nantwi, who was serving a five-year sentence for second-degree criminal weapon possession.<\/p>\n On March 2, the day after Nantwi was killed, all 10 defendant officers met at a diner \u201cto agree on a narrative to obstruct the investigation into the killing.\u201d Officers planted a weapon in Nantwi\u2019s cell to justify their force; lied about who was involved and the force used; and mopped up blood from Nantwi\u2019s cell.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tragic killings of Mr. Brooks and Mr. Nantwi demonstrated systemic shortcomings in oversight, accountability, and culture within [Department of Corrections and Community Supervision] facilities,\u201d the WilmerHale experts write.\u00a0 \u201cBoth incidents involved misuse of force and efforts to conceal misconduct, revealing deep cultural and procedural deficiencies at Marcy and Mid-State.\u201d<\/p>\n The problematic culture includes an \u201cus versus them\u201d mentality between guards and prisoners: Former officers said a lot of their colleagues felt the incarcerated people \u201cdeserved more punishment\u201d and would deem any officer who was \u201ctoo kind\u201d to detainees an \u201cinmate lover.\u201d<\/p>\n Corrections Department executives, former staff and detainees said \u201cofficers who took acts that would help an incarcerated individual \u2014 including steps to help with an investigation into officer misconduct \u2014 risk intimidation, retaliation, ostracization and abuse by their peers.\u201d<\/p>\n Among officers, the \u201cno snitching\u201d culture and \u201cbrotherhood\u201d among staff, broadly known as the \u201cthin blue line\u201d that divides order from chaos, feels like a means of protection in an environment riddled with danger, according to interviews cited in the report.<\/p>\n Racial bias was widespread, too, with the majority of those surveyed saying they observed \u201cdifferences\u201d in how often staff used force on people of different racial groups. Brooks and Nantwi were both Black. All of the officers who killed them, or stood by as it happened, are white.<\/p>\n A spokesperson said the state Department of Corrections \u201chas made significant progress implementing change in a number of critical areas over the last year, many of which are also identified as priorities in the WilmerHale report and recommendations.\u201d<\/p>\n So far the department says it has completed more than a dozen of the report\u2019s 77 recommendations, and is working on implementing another 47 measures, including expanding body-worn camera use, expanding staff and enhancing training and the use-of-force review process.<\/p>\n Daniel F. Martuscello III, the department\u2019s commissioner, thanked the report authors in a July 3 news release.<\/p>\n \u201cThese reports reflect both the important work already underway to strengthen safety, accountability, and professionalism across DOCCS, and the significant work that still lies ahead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The department spokesperson also noted that some recommendations may involve legislation, budgetary or collective bargaining issues.<\/p>\n \u2018Moral injury\u2019 on the job<\/p>\n In seeking to understand the vicious cycle of violence in prisons, researchers have looked at the social and biological mechanisms that underscore the group dynamics described in the WilmerHale report.<\/p>\n Lindsey Feldman is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Arizona\u2019s W.A. Franke Honors College. She pointed to a concept in sociology often used in the context of military service, called \u201cmoral injury,\u201d meaning damage to one\u2019s conscience or moral compass when they do or witness something that violates a deeply held moral belief.<\/p>\n Last year, the American Psychiatric Association recognized moral injury<\/a> as a mental health condition. It\u2019s often applied to institutional situations, like law enforcement or the military, where agents are asked to do things that cause moral injury as part of their job.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can become extremely distressing and harmful for them,\u201d Feldman said. \u201cPeople who work in prisons often have to make a choice that they know they\u2019re required to for their job, but that, for themselves, morally and ethically, they would not make.\u201d<\/p>\n That kind of violence has a ripple effect outward, Feldman said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s is the nature of carceralism to create spaces of dehumanization: the need for guards to dehumanize, to separate themselves from what they\u2019re asked to do for their job,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The cycle is furthered by officers\u2019 assumption that they are in danger, experts explained.<\/p>\n Keramet Reiter is an attorney and professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California Irvine.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you set people up in these situations, there tends to be violence because there\u2019s an assumption that people are being put in these kinds of places because they\u2019re really dangerous, and so then that creates all kinds of tensions \u2014 whether there\u2019s evidence of their dangerousness or not,\u201d Reiter said.<\/p>\n Added restrictions like solitary confinement breed psychological problems, including anger management issues, she noted, reinforcing fear on the side of correction officers who are already tasked with an overwhelming burden.<\/p>\n \u201cPrisons are like magnifying lenses for all of our social problems, and correctional staff are dealing with the deep end of that,\u201d Reiter said. \u201cThey\u2019re dealing with seriously mentally ill folks that can\u2019t even necessarily exist in our forensic hospitals. They\u2019re dealing with people with life sentences who feel like they have nothing to lose, right? So we create a system where we ask them to deal with our most severe social problems, and we often don\u2019t give them the training they need to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n While the division between incarcerated people and guards is stark, and at times deadly, Feldman has observed a much murkier distinction. In her work with fire crews in Arizona, incarcerated men and correction officers often come from the same socioeconomic background, the same rural areas, even the same high schools.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way the criminal legal system is set up in this country, to create a divide of us versus them \u2014 the real truth is that it is far more messy, and oftentimes way less dividable,\u201d Feldman said.<\/p>\n Understanding the complexity of how humans divide ourselves requires looking even deeper, at our mammalian instincts.<\/p>\n \u2018You get the empathy for free\u2019<\/p>\n Empathy is at the core of our human hard-wiring. We feel what others feel \u2014\u00a0yet the reluctance to step in when we see someone in need is part of our biology, too.<\/p>\n The \u201cbystander effect,\u201d which refers to an actor\u2019s reluctance to step in unless others are also helping, even exists in rats, as first identified in work led by researcher Peggy Mason.<\/p>\n As Mason explained, \u201chelping\u201d depletes our resources, and so to survive mammals make choices about when, and to whom, to lend a hand.<\/p>\n \u201cEvolutionarily, it does not serve well if you indiscriminately help all targets in all situations,\u201d said Mason, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n To further bolster survival, individuals are more likely to help \u201cin-group\u201d members than \u201cout-group\u201d members, given individuals are more likely to survive if the group is more cohesive.<\/p>\n While there\u2019s nothing naturally \u201cin-group\u201d about correctional officers, police officers, or other groups like physicians, Mason said, in each case, self-protection is a must. In a medical context, that may mean a doctor training to endure the sight of a needle going into a patient\u2019s skin, a moment where stopping someone from being jabbed won\u2019t help anyone\u2019s chances of survival.<\/p>\n In a prison environment, dehumanization is about rationalizing compassion, treating it as an intellectual experience, researchers say. It\u2019s a way of conserving resources to get through the day.<\/p>\n While our biology may tell us to pick and choose, those choices aren\u2019t hard-coded.<\/p>\n \u201cThe system is not at all unchangeable, it is incredibly malleable by environment, and that is one of the most hopeful things that we got out of our own research,\u201d Mason said.<\/p>\n An albino rat, for instance, won\u2019t help a black caped rat in distress if it\u2019s never seen one before \u2014 it won\u2019t register the other rat as one of its kind, a rodent\u2019s version of dehumanization. But if an albino lives with a black cape rat for two weeks, it will help any black cape rat.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s something about that exposure, that familiarity, that allows them now to make that rat a being,\u201d Mason said.<\/p>\n The biological basis for communicating our emotions, she said, is missing from the public discussion about the dynamic among police and correction officers.<\/p>\n \u201cYou get the empathy for free. You inherited it. It just happens,\u201d Mason said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to work to get it, but you do learn, as do other mammals, at some young age to start to preferentially exercise empathic concern toward individuals in the in-group. And then what\u2019s very peculiarly human is to exercise it for these socially constructed groups, such as prison guards or police officers.\u201d<\/p>\n Structural change\u00a0<\/p>\n Experts agreed that making meaningful improvements will take measures beyond better training and increased staffing.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any change beyond something significant and structural,\u201d Feldman said. \u201cI don\u2019t think more training fixes this, because how do you train away structural violence?\u201d<\/p>\n One step, she said, is reducing prison populations. \u201cIf there were less people in prison there would be less violence in prison, quite frankly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Some facilities are looking abroad to prison systems, like those in Northern Europe, that are notoriously less problematic than those in the States. It starts with an eye to the ultimate goal of prisoners reentering the community \u2014 like Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi were supposed to do.<\/p>\n \u201cOften in Northern European prisons, they\u2019re smaller, the staff receive more training, but also there\u2019s more of a culture of what people call normalization \u2014 of acknowledging that the vast majority of people in prison are going to come home,\u201d Reiter said. \u201cThe more normal their interactions can be in prison, the easier that transition will be back into our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n States like Washington<\/a> and Pennsylvania<\/a> are piloting programs examining what a \u201cnormal interaction\u201d in prison can look like.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can mean having a conversation about the football game that happened last weekend, or having a cup of coffee, or playing a game together,\u201d Reiter said.<\/p>\n Some facilities have cornhole, a basketball hoop or card games that \u201cgive people a chance to interact with each other as just two human beings who share a basic interest.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPreliminary evidence suggests that those simple moves can be really transformative for breaking down these stereotypes,\u201d Reiter said.<\/p>\n The projects are still in the early stages, she said, documenting implementation with the hope of longer-term evaluation. \u201cBut they show promise.\u201d<\/p>\n Our weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/marcy-correctional-facility-new-york-800x600.jpg\")
Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York. (Jayu via Wikimedia)<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/black-hooded-rats-800x600.jpg\")
Researchers have studied the relationship between albino rats and black-hooded rats, like the ones pictured, to better understand human empathy and the “bystander effect.” (Jason Snyder via Flickr)<\/p>\n
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