How Nepotism in New York Prisons Cost Prisoners Their Lives
by Anthony Accurso
The Martuscello family, a practical dynasty within New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), manipulated the system to take power and avoid accountability while overseeing a system that perpetuated physical and sexual abuse of prisoners.
The killing of Robert Brooks occurred on December 9, 2024, when 13 correctional officers and a nurse “surrounded Brooks in the medical wing of Marcy Correctional Facility,” as New York Focus reported. One “guard shove[d] an object in his mouth, while another grip[ped] his throat, and several more t[ook] turns beating him.” When Brooks eventually lost consciousness, “they lift[ed] him by his collar and thr[ew] him against a window.”
The following February, Daniel Martuscello III, the DOCCS commissioner, was grilled at a hearing in the state legislature about Brooks’ murder. After he was shown bodycam footage of guards assaulting Brooks, he said, “I share your outrage… Seeing that video makes me question everything.”
Activists who had opposed his confirmation in May 2024 did not believe Martuscello’s sentiment at, or before, the hearing. “Acting Commissioner Martuscello is deeply entrenched in, and continues to perpetuate, the deplorable status quo of the racist, brutal, and corrupt state prison system,” said one retired parole officer. “He articulates, he’s sharp, he’s well dressed, and he’s a cut-throat son of a bitch.”
It was the late Daniel Martuscello Jr. who began working at the DOCCS. His career spanned nearly five decades, first beginning as a guard, but later becoming superintendent of the maximum-security Coxsackie Correctional Facility and administrator for the surrounding cluster of prisons. Martuscello Jr. used his connections in theDOCCS’s Internal Investigation Office (IIO) to keep his own name out of abuse investigation reports and to promote his children and in-laws. He first leveraged his relationships to get several relatives appointed to positions in the IIO and, once entrenched, manipulated the outcome of investigations to serve what many guards referred to as the Martuscellos’ “Friends and Family” system.
Anyone who stood in their way, including investigators who faithfully did their jobs, got “burned.” One such investigator, Al Montegari, was hired to run the sex crimes division at the IIO. Montegari called out wasteful travel spending and sloppy evidence handling by other IIO staff, and refused to generally “play ball.” At the time, Chris Martuscello was second-in-command at the IIO, and Montegari’s office space was taken from him, leaving him to work in a cubicle like his junior investigators. After a clearly fraudulent disciplinary investigation, alleging he impersonated a police officer and illegally detained a driver on the Thruway, Montegari was cleared of the charges but still lost his position in the IIO. He won a lawsuit against DOCCS over the matter, with a jury awarding him $500,000.
With the Martuscellos running key positions in administration and the IIO, the DOCCS suffered one scandal after another, including a high-profile escape aided by a contract employee who was having sexual contact with a prisoner serving life. Each time, the IIO swept as much as possible under the rug.
In 2016, however, federal officials descended on the DOCCS to investigate systemic group assaults by staff on prisoners, known as “beat up squads.” This forced a change in the IIO, where it was reorganized as the Office of Special Investigations (OSI). But many of the Friends and Family retained leadership positions in OSI, and nothing seemed to change.
Beat up squads continued, as well as other systemic abuse. The New York legislature passed a landmark law limiting solitary confinement, which seemed to be actively undermined by then deputy commissioner Daniel Martuscello III.
The new law wasn’t popular among rank-and-file guards either, and this was among many reasons they initiated a wildcat strike shortly after the hearing. The strike lasted two weeks, causing prisoners to go without access to showers or regular meals as Governor Hochul called in the National Guard to keep the prisons “running.”
Guards circulated petitions with varying demands, but one such petition demanded the DOCCS board fire Commissioner Martuscello. While the strike has ended in a mediated agreement, the commissioner and most of his cronies have retained their positions.
Source: New York Focus
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