Staffing shortages at New York prisons have worsened, morale among guards remains low, and the lives of incarcerated people are still disrupted six months after a wildcat prison strike ended.
And prison officials are moving to weaken restrictions on the use of solitary confinement in state prisons, bowing to pressure from correctional officers who cited the law as a cause of their unlawful three-week walkout this winter.
The result is a raging debate over prison policy in Albany that will likely persist as Gov. Kathy Hochul runs for a second term.
“I'm sure that we're going to be talking about prisons a lot for the next 13 or 14 months,” said state Sen. Dan Stec, a Republican whose Adirondack district includes seven correctional facilities.
The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision released a proposal Friday that would allow guards to order solitary confinement for a broader range of alleged offenses, including sexual harassment and splashing bodily fluids and other substances on officers. It would also allow prisoners to be placed in solitary confinement for protective custody. The recommendations came after months of meetings with unions representing prison employees.
Stec and other Republican state lawmakers said the proposal is a good step toward increasing discipline in prisons. But the 2021 HALT Law, which contained the current restrictions on solitary confinement, passed with solid majorities of Democrats, who currently control both houses of the state Legislature.
Spokespeople for legislative leaders didn’t comment. Hochul, a Democrat, said she would review her department’s proposal and discuss it with lawmakers.
“Governor Hochul's top priority is public safety, and she is fully committed to ensuring the safety and security of all staff and incarcerated individuals that enter our correctional facilities,” spokesperson Matt Janiszewski said.
Supporters of the HALT law are ready for a fight. Antony Gemmell, a lawyer at the nonprofit Legal Aid Society, is suing the corrections department on behalf of incarcerated people who have been denied access to programming required under the HALT law, including recreation and academic classes.
Gemmell said the proposals would give too much discretion to guards.
“When things are left to officers, when they are given wide latitude to impose this very harsh punishment on people, it is very often abused,” he said.
Gemmell said the HALT law was never fully implemented. His suit alleges the corrections department acted unlawfully when it suspended programming during the strike, some of which still hasn’t been revived.
“Programming is being resumed in drips and drabs, but there's no firm commitment about when things will return to what HALT requires,” he said.
A corrections department spokesperson said the state’s 42 prisons “have been resuming programming as staffing levels permit.” Officials have also added new recruiting bonuses and launched a new ad campaign.
The number of people taking the exam to be a corrections officer is up 160%, the spokesperson said. Around 3,000 National Guard troops are working in prisons to supplement officers.
But there’s a lot of ground to make up.
There were 13,497 correctional officers and sergeants across the prison system before the strike started, according to a monthly DOCCS report. At the time, the department’s staffing plan called for 14,600 personnel, according to a court filing.
As of this month, there were 10,965 correctional officers and sergeants, according to a DOCCS report. Hochul fired around 2,000 strikers who refused to return to their posts. New York law makes it illegal for public employees to go on strike, and the walkout was condemned by state officials and union leaders.
Thousands of workers walked off the job anyway. They said they were protesting mandatory overtime caused by a lack of staff and increasing violence they blamed on the HALT law.
The walkout began just before several jail guards were charged in the beating death of Robert Brooks, a Rochester man who was killed at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica. Prisoner rights advocates accused corrections officers of launching the strike to change the subject.
Brooks’ beating was captured by officers' body-worn cameras, and prosecutors charged 10 prison employees in connection with his death. Six have pleaded guilty to charges including manslaughter and assault. Four men are scheduled for trial this year.
State Sen. Julia Salazar, a Democrat from Brooklyn who chairs her chamber’s corrections committee, said she was pleased to see four more officers plead guilty this week. In the wake of Brooks’ death, she pushed for an omnibus prison reform bill that mandates more cameras in correctional facilities and increases prison oversight.
Salazar called on Hochul to sign the bill, which passed in June. The senator blasted recommendations to change the HALT law.
“New York will never return to the practice of torturing people through the use of solitary confinement,” Salazar said in a statement. “We need the law to finally be properly implemented and followed for prisons and jails to become safer and more humane."
Isolated inmates
While lawmakers consider changes and a judge ponders the lawsuit, incarcerated people are left grappling with a new reality.
Sean Pica runs the organization Hudson Link, which coordinates college-in-prison programs at five Hudson Valley facilities. He said lockdowns make it hard to schedule classes and mean prisoners have a hard time getting educated.
“Lack of consistency in the prison world is super dangerous,” he said. “Now you're discouraged in an environment where you deal with discouragement hourly.”
One of the students who’s been affected is Joseph Desmond. The 36-year-old from Staten Island is serving a 25-year sentence at Sing Sing for killing an off-duty firefighter in 2018. Desmond said the lack of academic classes and other programs translates into despair.
“[The programming] gives us something to help us reintegrate into society,” he said. “And removing those programs has just done nothing but nurture a hostile environment and remove all hope from an individual who's sitting in the maximum security prison.”
Matt Keough, executive vice president of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, agreed that things run more smoothly in prisons when more programming and activities are available. But staff spend a huge amount of time just moving incarcerated people around, he said.
“You can't run the program if you don't have staff to cover it,” said Keough, a former correctional officer at the now-shuttered Great Meadow prison.
The union is raising the alarm about exposures to unknown substances containing fentanyl that are smuggled into prisons. The corrections department has started screening more mail sent to prisoners and now requires all people entering prisons to use full-body scanners.
These steps have helped, Keough said, but challenges remain. He wants to see lawmakers enact the department’s proposal regarding HALT.
“If you could modify the HALT program so there could be a little more internal discipline, that would be a huge step in the right direction,” he said.
For now, staff morale is quite low, according to Keough and Malone Mayor Andrea Dumas. Her village is about a dozen miles south of the Canadian border and close to three prisons.
“We're still having corrections officers coming out and telling us how dangerous their atmosphere is at work,” she said. “They feel like nobody's listening to them and nothing is changing.”
Jeongyoon Han contributed reporting.
