Giving Compass' Take:
- Researchers at The Marshall Project discuss how corrections officers consistently cover for other officers who abuse incarcerated people.
- What systemic issues enable this culture of abuse and cover-ups within New York state prisons? How can you help amplify the voices of incarcerated people?
- Learn more about abuse in New York state prisons.
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The way the prison guards described it in their paperwork, there was a minor disturbance the day they took Chad Stanbro to a dental clinic at a regional hospital.
Stanbro, a prisoner, had been sedated but became agitated during surgery, took a swing at a dentist and kicked a correctional officer in the stomach, they wrote. The guard and a colleague had quickly restrained him and had driven him back to Fishkill Correctional Facility, where, according to the senior officer’s account, Stanbro had “reported no injuries.”
But critical details were missing — including that Stanbro had been paralyzed during the incident. A third officer had rushed into the clinic’s operating room and had knelt on Stanbro’s neck until he couldn’t move, according to later court testimony. That guard had asked his colleagues to leave him out of their reports, they acknowledged at trial, and they had done so.
Even though Stanbro’s injuries were obvious — he could not walk or move his body from the neck down — the officer who injured him avoided discipline. Stanbro, however, was accused of assault, and after he left the hospital was put in solitary confinement. In July, a federal jury awarded him $2.1 million in damages.
Such cover-ups are commonplace across New York State’s prison system, according to a Marshall Project review of thousands of pages of court documents, arbitration records and officer disciplinary data.
Read the full article about abuse in New York state prisons by Joseph Neff, Alysia Santo and Tom Meagher at The Marshall Project.