New York’s prisons are working to rebuild themselves after a devastating, 22-day strike of nearly 8,000 corrections officers and the firing of about 2,000.
The independent citizens oversight group that has been monitoring prisons for more than 180 years is hoping this is a chance for reform. In a telephone interview, Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, said her organization has been keeping a close eye on things before, during and after the strike, and are hoping that Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul’s pre-strike commitment to major reforms at the prisons will stand.
“From the governor’s announcement of corrective actions back at the end of December, following the murder of Robert Brooks at Marcy Correctional Facility, she has a number of really unprecedented commitments that were made,” Scaife said.
ROBERT BROOKS DEATH
Those commitments came when Hochul visited Marcy Correctional and demanded a change in prison culture as a result of the death of Robert Brooks. Brooks was an inmate at nearby Mohawk Correctional, who was transferred to Marcy late on Dec. 9.
Bodycam footage shows he was viciously beaten by a handful of COs while other officers, lieutenants and prison staff watched.
Brooks was taken to a hospital in Utica and died early Dec. 10.
Hochul said it was time to make real changes to the culture within the state prisons. Advocates, incarcerated people and some prison staff have long reported a culture of intimidation within the prison system, where COs and supervisors are encouraged to cut corners, turn a blind eye to violence and mistreat the incarcerated people they’re sworn to protect and rehabilitate.
“The system failed Mr. Brooks and I will not be satisfied until there has been significant culture change,” Hochul said at the time.
BLUEPRINT FOR REFORM
She announced a plan to install body-cameras and a new range of fixed-point cameras across the prisons to the tune of $400 million, and added more staff to the state Office of Special Investigations, which is run out of the Attorney General’s Office and investigates all incidents where a law enforcement officer kills a person. She announced a plan to partner with a two outside groups to assess prison operations, from a safety and a human rights perspective, and announced a new task force within the state Council of Community Justice focused on prison reform.
CANY is part of that task force, and also received an additional $2 million for its ongoing monitoring work.
“Over a period of two years, the task force is tasked with building a blueprint for really transformational reforms within the prisons,” Scaife said.
By combining ongoing review and monitoring work with work on the future task force, Scaife said that CANY is going to be well-positioned going forward to hold the prisons to the laws they’re bound by, and to guide them.
HALT ACT
A major driver for the 22-day CO strike, and an issue still at the top of mind for many people within the state prisons system, is the HALT Act. Passed in 2022, the law restricted the use of long-term solitary confinement within prisons and jails across New York, and mandated that facilities provide at least four hours per day of rehabilitative programming for almost every incarcerated person, as well as commit to providing seven hours per day of “out of cell” time.
COs have said this law is difficult and dangerous to implement. They criticize its restrictions on solitary confinement and argue it takes away a disciplinary tool, and they’re critical of the programming and out-of-cell requirements, arguing that it’s difficult to manage so many unrestricted people with an ongoing staffing shortage.
To bring the striking COs back to work, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision committed to pausing the programming elements of HALT for about three months, and to call together a committee of COs, support staff and DOCCS officials to recommend changes to the HALT Act. The legislature has not moved to make any changes to the law in their budget deliberations, and the committee has yet to be formed.
HALT REVIEW
Scaife said that CANY supports the formation of a task force or investigatory body on safety and HALT, and that the organization has long suggested that DOCCS establish a task force specifically investigating violence in the prisons and include outside stakeholders like staff or families of the incarcerated. She said she would expect CANY to be involved, either directly or indirectly, with the HALT task force, and said the association will be offering input.
“We will offer our input regardless of whether we’re invited to participate in those meetings or not,” she said.
Scaife said there are many aspects of HALT that could bear review, but many of those are based on how DOCCS has interpreted their responsibilities under the law rather than concrete problems with the law’s language itself.
“In my experience and our monitoring activities, we find that it’s the way DOCCS interprets provisions of the law that are actually driving some of the challenges that may have been given more media attention during the strikes,” she said.
“I think there’s plenty of room for reshaping the way HALT is being implemented without having to go back to the Legislature to do anything to the law itself.”
IMPLEMENTING HALT
Previous reports from CANY in 2023 have found that HALT’s implementation in the prisons was flawed.
DOCCS staff were caught holding people in solitary confinement for up to six times longer than allowed, provided many fewer hours of out-of-cell time in some cases, did not provide all programming required by the law, and occasionally placed all people in some rehabilitative programs into shackles automatically without regard for actual safety needs, among other violations of the law.
CANY suggests that DOCCS provide more rehabilitative programming earlier in a person’s sentence, should increase transparency regarding safety and security in prisons, and that the state Office of Mental Health, which provides much of the programming in prisons, should publish and adopt a clear set of regulations regarding HALT.
Some of those 2023 recommendations remained in the 2025 list CANY put together in January; they’re still asking OMH to formalize its role on delivering programming in prisons, as well as asking the state to replace the specialized mental health care and crisis care beds lost when Great Meadow and Sullivan correctional facilities closed last year. They’re also still asking DOCCS to make rehabilitative programming available earlier in a person’s incarceration.
CANY is still looking for the state to open up the Prison Violence Task Force and put external stakeholders on it, and to make improvements to the Incarcerated Grievance Program that takes incarcerated people’s complaints.
Included in those recommendations were a handful of items specific to recruitment and retention.
CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT
Before the prison strike, about 2,000 CO jobs were empty.
With the additional 2,000 officers fired for their continued striking last week, DOCCS is operating on a much-reduced staffing level and relying on about 6,000 National Guard troops to fill in the gaps.
In January, CANY suggested that DOCCS work to improve staff morale, recognize staff excellence more often, modernize its technologies and record keeping systems for staff and incarcerated people, expand on recruitment and retention initiatives, and expand training related to staff wellness in all facilities.
“Some of the issues that have been raised for us by security staff in conversations during our oversight visits related to this idea of work/life balance, needing additional wellness support, support around vicarious or secondary trauma that people experience working in these very challenging environments,” Scaife said.
“There are people with a great amount of need and some very vulnerable, very troubled people.”
CULTURE SHIFT
Scaife said she thinks there are many avenues for DOCCS to better support all of its staff, many reliant on a change in the culture at DOCCS to make the relationship between incarcerated people and COs less fraught and oppositional.
Scaife said that the governor and legislature’s recent agreement to close up to five more state prisons with 90 days of notice could present an opportunity to stand up some more staff supports and encourage a culture change.
The prisons have faced a deficit of COs for years, running with about 2,000 fewer people than they’d want to.
That’s led to mandatory overtime.
CONSOLIDATING PRISONS
The idea is that if the state manages to right-size its facilities with the number of people it has to work them and the number of people imprisoned in them, that could eliminate the strains of working in an understaffed facility.
“I think that presents an opportunity for further consolidation of the system, to make use of unused bed space and shut down facilities that don’t need to be operating, move staff to fewer facilities, and double down on these commitments to culture change, to make prisons an environment where people would actually want to come and work and feel like they’re making a difference, as opposed to feeling as they are kind of being sucked dry by the system,” she said.
With 10,000 guards spread across 42 state prisons, Hochul said last week that she has no choice but to close more facilities and move COs to the remaining prisons.
While closures have historically led to a loss in some positions, the state has taken great efforts to relocate COs from closed facilities to nearby open ones after each closure.
While she’s seeking the power to close five facilities, it’s not clear if she will actually close that many. Last year, the governor sought the same power but only closed two prisons.
Until the number of prisons is reduced or the state can recruit more corrections officers, DOCCS will continue to rely on National Guard troops to cover the gaps.
Some officials on background have said National Guard members could be assigned to the prisons for six months to a year.
“What I would expect is a gradual decrease in reliance on the National Guard, as the state moves towards consolidation through additional prison closures, additional measures to release people safely who can be safely released to the community, so the overall prison population can continue to be driven down, and then we’ll look to see that the recruitment efforts are working,” Scaife said.
“I do think it’s going to be quite some time before the system returns to some semblance of normal.”
RESTORING NORMALCY
Efforts to restore normal operations have been slow-going.
COs working in the prisons, speaking on condition of anonymity as they have not been permitted to speak with the media, reported that only limited movements have been allowed for incarcerated people, and each facility is at a different point in its restoration of operations.
DOCCS on Monday released a detailed plan on the restoration of legal visitation, where lawyers for the incarcerated can meet with their clients.
Effective Monday, 30 prisons were reopening to legal visits under their normal rules, including Cape Vincent, Gouverneur and Riverview.
A list of nine prisons will restore legal visitation within one to two weeks.
Franklin Correctional will restore legal visits by March 24.
Three prisons have no estimated return date for legal visitation: Bare Hill and Upstate in Franklin County, and Sing Sing in Westchester County.
Only nine prisons across the state are open for weekend, non-legal visitation for family or friends; Bedford Hills, Fishkill, Green Haven, Hale Creek, Hudson, Queensboro, Shawangunk, Sing Sing and Taconic.