In 2011, Mr. Williams was led into a darkened room by three guards who kicked and battered him with heavy wooden batons. The assault would never have come to light had Mr. Williams’s injuries been treated within the prison walls. But the prison medical staff recognized the life-threatening nature of the injuries and sent him to a hospital, which found two broken legs, a broken shoulder, several cracked rip, a fractured orbit of the left eye and myriad cuts and bruises.

Image George Williams Credit... Damon Winter/The New York Times

The union contract has presented serious obstacles to investigating cases like this one. A particularly egregious provision allows guards to essentially obstruct investigations by refusing to answer questions from police agencies. When the State Police investigated the Williams beating, 11 of the 15 guards they sought to question simply declined to cooperate.

Inmates who had witnessed the assault were fearful that the same thing would happen to them. To get their stories, the corrections department had to relocate five of them to other prisons.

The guards were charged with first-degree gang assault in December 2011; state officials described this as the first time that criminal charges had been brought against corrections officers for a nonsexual assault on an inmate.

The next labor contract needs to compel guards to cooperate with criminal investigations or be fired. It must also pare back a destructively rigid seniority system that gives guards their choice of jobs and that prevents managers from moving them out of positions for which they are unsuited and in which they can do great harm.