I witnessed the brutality of America’s prisons first hand. We need urgent reform | Alex Duran

It shouldn't take suing departments of corrections or capturing atrocities on illegal cellphones to see what happens behind prison walls

When a camera records an act of lethal violence against someone in official custody, the state cannot hide what it typically keeps in the dark. That's what happened when correction officers murdered Robert Brooks at Marcy correctional facility in New York. Restrained in handcuffs, Brooks was beaten to death by officers unaware that their own body-worn cameras were documenting every blow.

The deaths of Brooks and another handcuffed man, Messiah Nantwi, were the catalysts of a recent investigation by the New York Times that found guards in New York prisons use violence at alarming rates. Because the public is largely unaware of what their tax dollars fund behind prison walls, these revelations are significant. But the violence is not unique to New York.

Alex Duran is program director at Galaxy Gives and a co-producer of The Alabama Solution