For the past year, reporters at New York Focus and Hell Gate have been working together to report on the extraordinary number of sexual abuse allegations made by people held in New York prisons in a flood of lawsuits under the Adult Survivors Act, as well as the state government’s efforts to block those lawsuits.

This reporting raises major questions: How seriously do state prison authorites take allegations of sexual abuse by prison staff? What mechanisms are in place to prevent it, investigate it, and protect people in state custody from people found to have committed abuse?

To try to shed some light on those questions, reporters at New York Focus filed public records requests a year ago for the personnel records of prison staff named in the lawsuits, and records of any investigations into their alleged abuse.

But the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS, which runs the state prisons, has so far stonewalled the requests. Last week, New York Focus, represented by the Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic, sued the agency in state court to get the documents it seeks.

Hell Gate reporter Nick Pinto interviewed Chris Gelardi, New York Focus’s justice bureau chief, and Hell Gate’s Jessy Edwards about the lawsuit, their reporting, and why it matters.

A fight over the future of New York City’s electric grid is heating up.

Energy developers are racing to build community-scale battery storage projects across the five boroughs, a push that the city is counting on to bolster reliability while cutting costs and pollution. State energy officials estimate that a rapid battery buildout over the next few years could yield $2 billion in statewide energy system savings, with much of the benefits concentrated in and around New York City.

Already, about two dozen projects have been built around the city, and scores more are in advanced stages of development. But Con Edison, the city’s electric utility, is pumping the brakes.