Unbalanced Power

The union is a formidable political force, protected in the Legislature, primarily by upstate lawmakers in districts where prisons are the biggest employers. The chairman of the corrections committee in the State Senate, Patrick M. Gallivan, a Republican who represents an area outside Buffalo and Rochester, has five prisons in his district alone.

Image Senator Patrick M. Gallivan Credit... Mike Groll/Associated Press

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, has walked a thin line. While he oversaw the remaking of internal affairs, he also has ties to the union. His chief of staff, Melissa DeRosa, worked in public relations for the union for several months in 2009 and is the daughter of Giorgio DeRosa, a major Albany lobbyist whose firm received $691,000 from the union between 2010 and 2015, according to state filings. (A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo said Ms. DeRosa had always been recused from anything involving her father’s firm.)

Union leaders have managed to negotiate favorable labor contracts with a long line of governors, including Mr. Cuomo, in many cases giving them more control over personnel decisions than the prison superintendents or even the corrections department’s commissioner.

Under the current contract, union seniority rules dictate that superintendents have practically no power to transfer problem officers.

Disciplinary rules give an arbitrator, not the commissioner, final say on who gets fired.

Rules governing internal affairs investigations require officers to receive 24 hours’ notice before being questioned, and while on the job, a guard cannot be penalized for refusing to answer questions from an outside law enforcement agency.

Moreover, details of disciplinary measures taken against guards are kept secret from the public, because of privacy protections won by the police and corrections unions over the years.

The result is that a culture of brutality has been allowed to thrive in the prisons, where a few rogue guards, often known on the cellblocks as beat-up squads, administer vigilante justice, while fellow officers look the other way, according to cases documented over the past year by The New York Times and its reporting partner, The Marshall Project.