More than 50 advocacy organizations are pressing New York lawmakers to demand accountability from the state’s prison system, sending a letter Tuesday to Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders as the legislature weighs more than $4 billion in corrections funding.

The push follows the deaths of Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi, two incarcerated men killed by officers inside state prisons four months apart. Brooks died in December 2024. Nantwi died the following March. Both deaths prompted public outrage and promises of reform from the governor’s office.

“The system failed Mr. Brooks, and I will not be satisfied until there has been significant culture change,” Hochul said after Brooks’ death.

The letter went to Hochul, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, and other lawmakers. The coalition behind it wants answers on a range of issues, including DOCCS’s implementation of the HALT Solitary Law, parole access, medical care for aging prisoners, visitation and rehabilitation policies, and racial disparities in incarceration and discipline.

Hochul did follow through on some commitments. Her administration committed more than $418 million to expand camera systems across the state’s 42 correctional facilities, and 5,672 body-worn cameras were purchased for officers working housing galleries, facility escorts, and prisoner transports. But the rollout has been slow. Only 11 prisons have finished installing fixed cameras. Seventeen more are still in design, construction, or undergoing upgrades. State officials have not disclosed which companies were hired for the work or provided a completion timeline.

The administration also hired WilmerHale, a high-powered law firm, to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. That contract is worth $9.3 million. The report is long-delayed, and there is no new timeline for its completion.

Meanwhile, advocates point to mounting deaths inside state facilities. According to DOCCS data cited in the coalition’s letter, at least 160 people have died in New York prisons since Brooks’ death. The average age of death in state custody is 56 years old, a figure the advocates call alarming.

DOCCS said deaths that appear to involve anything other than natural causes or known medical conditions are investigated by its Office of Special Investigations, the New York State Police, and reported to the Attorney General’s office. That process, however, has not satisfied advocates or the families of people who have died behind bars.

One of the most concrete flashpoints in the budget fight is the proposed elimination of a $3 million funding boost to the Correctional Association of New York, an independent nonprofit with a state-granted mandate to inspect prisons. That funding, added last year, allowed CANY to hire 10 staff members and concentrate their work on high-risk facilities.

Hochul’s proposed $4.15 billion corrections budget cuts that money entirely.

“We were shocked,” Sumeet Sharma, CANY’s director of policy, told THE CITY.

The Correctional Association is one of the only independent bodies with legal authority to enter state prisons and report on conditions. Cutting its funding while the system faces this level of scrutiny sends a troubling signal about whether the administration’s reform commitments are more than rhetorical.

The broader advocacy coalition is not letting that contradiction pass without comment. Their letter connects the camera delays, the stalled WilmerHale report, and the CANY funding cut into a single argument: that New York’s stated commitment to correctional reform has not been matched by action.

The legislature now has to decide whether to restore the CANY funding and push harder on the oversight questions the executive branch has left unanswered. With $4.15 billion on the table and at least 160 people dead in state custody since December 2024, this is not a budget conversation that can be treated as routine.

Advocates are asking lawmakers to use the funding process to require accountability. Whether Albany has the will to do it is the real question this spring.