By NYCLU
NEW YORK – Last week, the New York Civil Liberties Union published two decades of officer misconduct and disciplinary records from the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS). The NYCLU’s interactive database and officer look-up, which features thousands of records from 2000 to 2020, offers the public new and crucial insight into the department’s actions and abuses of incarcerated New Yorkers.
View the new data here.
Prior to the 2020 repeal of section 50-a of the state civil rights law, such records were virtually impossible to obtain under state law. Today’s disclosures resulted from the NYCLU’s 2023 Freedom of Information Law lawsuit against DOCCS, which runs 42 prisons across the state that incarcerate around 33,000 people.
“New Yorkers deserve to know what’s hidden behind the walls of our state prisons. With the data we published today, we are making a trove of previously secret information accessible, searchable, and subject to public scrutiny for the first time,” said Bobby Hodgson, assistant legal director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “These records show what happened when thousands of DOCCS employees were investigated for misconduct, and whether they were held accountable or not.”
For years, impacted people, advocates and experts have raised the alarm about DOCCS’s culture of violence and lack of accountability for staff misconduct. This includes DOCCS’s unconstitutional abuse of solitary confinement, sexual abuse of people in custody, and the systemic mistreatment of people with disabilities.
“Today’s publication of two decades of officer misconduct and disciplinary documents released by NYS DOCCS is a critical step towards improving transparency and accountability in our justice system,” said Linton Mann III, partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. “The publication of these records also creates a path for the next crucial stage by enabling the necessary investigations of possible misconduct in the state prison and parole systems.”
In December 2024, the department made national and international headlines after DOCCS officers beat to death Robert Brooks, an incarcerated man at Marcy Correctional Facility. Brooks’s killing has prompted calls for legislative reforms to provide greater accountability for staff abuse and independent oversight of state prisons.
