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ALBANY — Roni Minter had supportive parents, a happy childhood, and a middle-class upbringing divided between Queens and suburban Long Island. Trouble found Minter nevertheless.

“I was an entitled kid that went very out of control,” the 61-year-old told me, unstintingly explaining criminal behavior, including larcenies, that led to several prison stints. “I was immersed in the culture of addiction, all aspects of it.”

Enter Father Peter Young, the legendary Catholic priest from Albany.

Newly released from prison about two decades ago, Minter went to live in a supportive housing facility operated by Young’s addiction-recovery nonprofit. One day, Minter was surprised to find Young sitting in the community room.

Come work for me in Albany, the priest said, apparently impressed by Minter’s HIV-related work in prison.

Minter assumed the offer was idle talk until a phone call the next day from a Young assistant who described the new job and offered housing. Minter was flabbergasted, and deeply moved, by the priest’s willingness to take a chance on a person with such a checkered past.

But that was Father Young, who died in 2020.

“I joke that he kidnapped me and brought me to Albany,” Minter said. “I knew no one here. No one.”

Two decades later, Minter is still here, the founder of Freedom Unshackled, a group that advocates for better conditions in New York prisons.

“I needed to address some things,” Minter told me, recalling the horrors of prison life. “The rapes. The beatings… It stayed with me.”

If it’s true that a society should be judged by how it treats criminals, we aren’t doing well, and I’m not convinced many Americans care. Prisoners are out of sight and mostly out of mind. Horrors like the killing of Robert Brooks, beaten to death by correction officers at Marcy Correctional Facility, are shrugged away.

Inmates? Yawn. They don’t get our sympathy.

Minter understands that, of course. Getting people to care is Freedom Unshackled’s greatest hurdle. The public doesn’t identify with inmates.

“But people are one mistake, one mishap, one drink from being in prison themselves,” Minter added. “None of us (in prison) were singing in the choir. But none of us deserved to get beaten.”

Freedom Unshackled focuses much of its attention on conditions within the Albany County Correctional Facility. That focus isn’t just about proximity, said Minter, who believes the jail in Colonie is atypical for its brutality and squalor.

Activists aren’t the only ones troubled by the facility. When county legislators visited last year, several found conditions deplorable, and one, Deputy Chair Wanda Willingham, couldn’t take what she was seeing and abandoned the tour.

Minter, pointing to the videotaped confrontation between correction officers and inmate Marquis Norwood, alleges that abuse is routine at the jail and that inmates are routinely denied medical treatment and legal visits. All of which, Minter said, should be considered a stain on the record of Sheriff Craig Apple, who this month announced he would not seek reelection.

Apple is one of the region’s most popular and visible elected officials, as many of you will know, and Minter talked about seeing the sheriff’s community dedication firsthand, including when he delivered masks and other supplies to Minter’s Arbor Hill neighbors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was on Team Apple,” Minter said.

But the sheriff’s intransigence toward what Minter claims is a “culture of violence” led to disillusionment. Freedom Unshackled has aggressively pushed for better oversight by county lawmakers and the creation of a citizens’ board to review complaints.

Apple pushed back on the criticisms.

“There is a culture — I’m not stupid — and I’ve worked my ass off to change that culture,” Apple said, noting that officers wear body cameras and insisting that abuse claims are proactively investigated. “We don’t go to work every day with the intention of hurting someone. We’re attempting to do some good. This is why I’m frustrated and have had enough.”

The sheriff later clarified Minter and other critics aren’t the sole reason he’s leaving. And he conceded that the jail, which lacks full air conditioning and includes areas constructed in 1931, isn’t perfect. But jail isn’t supposed to be a pleasant experience, he added.

“There are poor people in Albany who don’t have air conditioning, and there are homeless Marines sleeping in tents who don’t have air conditioning,” Apple said, suggesting that inmates shouldn’t sit atop anyone’s sympathy list. “Stay out of jail. Make better choices.”

It is impossible to know whether Minter and other activists will find Apple’s replacement more to their liking. (Probably not.) But I’ll credit Minter with helping to draw attention to the jail’s conditions, with pushing us to see what we’d rather not.

Notably, county lawmakers, with Apple’s support, have agreed to spend $300,000 for an assessment of the jail’s conditions, including “urgent life-safety concerns,” with an eye toward upgrades and renovations.

“That’s a good step,” Minter said. “But more, much more, is needed.”

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