NEW YORK (AP) – New York state police are investigating the death of an inmate as the state corrections system continues to be roiled by a wildcat strike by prison staff.
The agency said it had launched a probe into the death of Messiah Nantwi at Mid-State Correctional Facility. Police and corrections officials have declined to provide details, other than to say the 22-year-old died at a hospital in Utica on Saturday.
The New York Times, citing accounts from other inmates, reported that he was beaten by correctional officers.
New York County Defender Services Executive Director Stan German described Nantwi as a “bright” young man dealing with “significant mental health challenges” following a “dysfunctional violent upbringing.”
The public defender’s office had been representing Nantwi as he awaited trial in the shooting deaths of two men in 2023.
“True, he was incarcerated, but he was still entitled like all of us, to basic human dignity and safety,” German said in a statement. “Instead, he suffered a violent senseless death at the hands of state corrections officers operating within a toxic culture that our society mainly ignores.”
Corrections Department Spokesperson Thomas Mailey declined to provide more details about Nantwi’s death, citing the ongoing investigation. But he confirmed that 11 staffers have been placed on administrative leave, pending the results of the probe.
Mid-State is across the street from the Marcy Correctional Facility, where six guards have been charged with murder in the death of Robert Brooks, who was beaten by officers in December.
Nantwi had entered the state prison system last May and had been serving a five-year sentence for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon related to a shooting with police officers in 2021, according to the Corrections Department website and the Bronx District Attorney’s office.
The probe into Nantwi’s death comes as a wildcat strike by state prison guards stretched into a third week, prompting officials to start firing workers for failing to abide by a deal to end the illegal labour action.
The state’s homeland security commissioner, Jackie Bray, said terminations began on Sunday and that on Monday the state began cancelling health insurance for correctional officers who have remained on strike. Their dependents will also lose coverage.
Fewer than 10 officers have been fired so far, Bray said, while thousands are in line to lose their health insurance benefits.
A message seeking comment was left with the officers’ union, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association.
Director of the Release Ageing People in Prison Campaign Jose Saldana said guards were striking as a “distraction” from the renewed focus on inmate abuse.
“To put it more bluntly, guards are holding hostage tens of thousands of incarcerated people, whose basic survival needs are often going unmet, in order to demand even more power to harm those in their custody,” Saldana said.
German, of the public defender’s office, said the state prison system has suffered from “institutional rot” for too long.
He said a recent lawsuit revealed instances where corrections officers at the Mid-State Correctional Facility allegedly beat and assaulted more than 30 inmates, denied them medical attention, then threatened them with further violence if they spoke out.
“The time for empty platitudes that do nothing to safeguard the safety of inmates is over,” he said in a statement. “The evidence – of corruption, of violent malfeasance, of institutional cowardice – is plain for all to see.”
Corrections officers began walking out on February 17 to protest working conditions.
Last Thursday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced a binding agreement between the state and officers’ union to end the picketing. Officers were required to return to work by Saturday to avoid being disciplined for striking. The deal included ways to address staffing shortages and minimise mandatory 24-hour overtime shifts. It also offers a temporary bump in overtime pay, a potential change in pay scale and a 90-day suspension of a law limiting the use of solitary confinement.
The strike violated a state law barring walkouts by most public employees. Hochul deployed the National Guard to some prisons to take the place of striking workers.
Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martuscello said on Monday that the number of facilities with striking workers had dropped from 38 to 32, though visiting remained suspended at all state prisons.
