The murder has led to more tumult than New York’s prison system has seen since the Attica prison uprising over five decades ago.
The murder has led to more tumult than New York’s prison system has seen since the Attica prison uprising over five decades ago. ·  View in browser
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Robert Ricks, Robert Brooks’s father, standing with protesters calling during a legislative hearing on prison reform prompted by Brooks’s killing by state prison guards. Chris Gelardi / New York Focus
The murder has led to more tumult than New York’s prison system has seen since the Attica prison uprising over five decades ago.
By Chris Gelardi

It’s been 54 years since the infamous Attica prison uprising, when incarcerated men took over the maximum-security facility in western New York for nearly five days and drew nationwide attention to the abuse, neglect, and racism they’d endured.

The uprising prompted New York state to implement a number of prison reforms, including improved access to hygiene items, visits, education, religious services, and avenues to report mistreatment. Yet the policy changes weren’t a cure-all: Though the state enacted more reforms and saw its prison population decline in the decades that followed, abuse and neglect remained a fact of prison life and rarely made headlines.

Then came the murder. On December 9, 2024, guards at Central New York’s Marcy Correctional Facility beat a 43-year-old incarcerated man named Robert Brooks, injuring him so severely that he died the next day.

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A health insurer offering shoddy coverage to low-wage workers at taxpayer expense will be replaced next year. But will what comes next be any better?
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New York state will replace the company providing health insurance to hundreds of thousands of home care workers next year.

The move comes after a series of New York Focus stories found that the company, called Leading Edge Administrators, routinely underpays doctors, bills patients for care it has promised to cover, attempts to cancel patients’ insurance without notice, pockets money that is meant for low-wage workers, and directs profits to a shady charity.

Leading Edge, which also goes by the name Omni Advantage, was hired earlier this year by Public Partnerships LLC(PPL), a care management company, to oversee health insurance for employees of the $11 billion CDPAP program.

New York’s Office of Addiction Services and Supports is running television ads featuring AI-generated faces without disclosing the technology to viewers.
By Finn Hartnett

It’s been difficult to miss this fall’s ad campaign from New York’s Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS). The “Turn the Page on Stigma” campaign has blanketed subway cars, billboards, local television networks, and social media feeds across the state with ads reminding viewers not to judge those battling addiction.

The ads feature people holding up books or emerging out of book pages, with captions such as “Know what they say about judging a book by its cover?”

There is indeed more than meets the eye about the people in these ads: Many are not real, but instead reproductions generated by artificial intelligence.

The campaign comes amid growing efforts by state lawmakers to regulate the use of AI in advertising, which they say can mislead viewers and undermine trust. The ads don’t disclose the use of AI. In a statement, OASAS spokesperson Evan Frost said that OASAS partnered with the Binghamton-based agency Idea Kraft to produce the ads, which were made with a blended approach of AI and traditional methods. A spokesperson for Idea Kraft directed questions back to OASAS.

Visitors to New York state prisons now must pass through body scanners in order to qualify for a full-contact visit in which they can sit at a table with their incarcerated loved one and touch them. Anoka County Sheriff's Office
Guards demanded body scanners to cut down on contraband. Now they’re turning visitors away over their hygiene and medical supplies.
By Raina Lipsitz, Chris Gelardi and Sydney Umstead

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Staying Focused is compiled and written by Alex Arriaga
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