Mercedes Christopher knew something was wrong the moment she got a call from her son.
“He wasn't speaking like his normal self,” said Christopher, whose son Malik Christopher is incarcerated at Bare Hill Correctional Facility. “[You] can tell that, you know, he was hurting.”
During the call last Friday, she said he told her that he had been attacked the day before by a group of other incarcerated people. Then the National Guard and other fill-in corrections staffers came to see him.
“He thought, ‘Oh okay, I'm getting help,’” she said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul dispatched the National Guard to help secure Bare Hill and other state prisons after correctional officers walked out, staging an illegal strike nearly two weeks ago. Terms of a tentative, mediated deal announced late Thursday comes with a demand that officers return to work this weekend, with terms that include increased overtime pay and a continued pause on the previously restricted use of solitary confinement.
Striking guards have complained about increased violence against prison staff, and inmate-on-inmate assaults. There have been at least three inmate deaths during the strike, reported at the Auburn and Sing Sing correctional facilities. And for 27-year-old Malik Christopher -- serving a 3 ½-year sentence for attempted robbery -- the worst allegedly wasn’t over when help arrived last week.
He told his mother that when he didn’t fully comply with the substitute guards’ questioning, he was taken to a bathroom where they beat him in the head, stomped him in the groin, and slammed him against a wall so hard that he was left bleeding from his ears. Malik, who is Black, was also called a racial slur, she said.
Christopher said her son has been in solitary confinement in Bare Hill, which is near the Canadian border, since, and has not seen a doctor. She said she’s never been this worried for her son before.
“My anxiety is at an all-time high,” she said as she was brought to tears. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anxiety before.”
Asked about Malik Christopher’s claims, a spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections said the matter has been referred to the Office of Special Investigations for review, but did not provide further information or comment on the allegations.
Mercedes Christopher is a pharmacy technician from Brooklyn. She and her son speak daily, and she has been asking him routine medical questions as a way to monitor his condition.
“How do you feel? Are you bleeding when you urinate? Do you see any more blood? Are you lethargic? Are you tired? Are you throwing up?” she said she asks him.
Christopher said she believes her son has not been able to get medical help because of the strike, which the corrections union did not authorize. The organizing saw nine out of 10 corrections officers walk off the job.
For incarcerated people and their families, concerns over solitary confinement rise
It is yet to be seen whether the striking corrections officers accept the terms, but Hochul insisted that the tentative deal is a reasonable compromise between the state and the union.
“We're trying hard to reach those who are not out there, who are actually at home, and make sure they know what is being offered to them, and the opportunity to come back to work, certainly tomorrow,” Hochul said at a news conference in Rochester on Friday. “We want them back at work, and we hope that they will look very seriously at what I believe is a real win for the corrections officers.”
Mercedes Christopher is torn: If officers accept the deal, maybe that would mean her son will finally get medical treatment.
But will he still be in solitary confinement?
One part of the deal would allow the broader use of solitary confinement. She has seen the ill effects it’s been having on her son for the past week, she said. She believes reinstating solitary confinement to full use could create more problems -- and more anxiety for incarcerated individuals, who have a higher rate of experiencing mental health issues than the rest of the state population.
“In New York, we already have so many mental health issues already,” Christopher said.
Joseph Patterson, 37, who is incarcerated at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster County, said he was in solitary confinement several times for months-long periods before a state law called the HALT Act put restrictions on the practice in 2022. He says solitary confinement is akin to psychological torture.
"It's like being locked up inside of a box, literally,” Patterson told his mother in a phone call. “That doesn't help anybody. It just makes people more rebellious.”
Now Patterson, who is serving a sentence of 27 years to life in prison with convictions for attempted murder and assaulting a police officer, said he is set to finish his bachelor’s degree in sociology this spring after having completed an associate’s degree in individual studies with SUNY Ulster. But with the strike cancelling his classes, he’s not sure if he’ll finish in time. He told his mother in a phone call that other programming like anger management and substance abuse groups also were suspended.
“This has been bad for some people psychologically, absolutely,” Patterson said.
And he said it’s been hard for him to see the corrections officers break the law by striking.
“They have been on a strike, which is illegal, yet they're going to come here to work and they're going to impose their will on us, for them to enforce the law,” he said.
“That’s hypocrisy. They were just breaking the law.”
