After nearly three weeks of pickets that impacted staffing outside most of New York State prisons, the bitter dispute between the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and the New York State Correctional Offices and Police Benevolent Association ended this past weekend with some issues resolved and corrections officers beginning to return to work on March 10.
True, there is an agreement in place between the state and NYSCOPBA, but that doesn’t mean everything is over.
Anything but.
Even after the longest walkout by New York’s corrections officers in recent memory, NYSCOPBA still has concerns about mandates they consider “prisoner-friendly”, like the HALT Act that puts limited times when solitary confinement can be used, or corrections officers forced to work extended overtime periods.
Jim Miller, NYSCOPBA spokesman, explains:
“You have a number of inmate advocacy groups that pushed along the lawmakers for the HALT act and continue to push for inmates' rights, but overlook the violence and the unsafe conditions that officers have to work in,” Miller said.
One of the leading reform advocates in New York, Jerome Wright, told WBFO previously that he believed the state's prison system never truly put the law into practice.
"How can you repeal something that you never fully implemented? That's like saying something is broken before you even try it," said Wright. "They never fully implemented neither the spirit, nor the letter of the law as it applies to HALT. And they [corrections officers] talking about it is the reason for their problems? That is unconscionable."
Spread among 42 correctional facilities, New York has 32,600 prisoners in its system yet only employs 15,200 officers.
According to Miller, more than 75 percent of the prisoners are in prison because of violent, felonious acts.
Inmate-on-staff assaults hit record numbers in 2024, at 2,702. Inmate-on-inmate assaults numbered nearly 3,000.
Taken together, it makes for a strain-filled job that most officers face.
“When you're talking about the general public versus talking about law enforcement, it's a little bit different situation, as opposed to say, a police department," Miller said. "Police officers in a community are out and about and have a lot of interaction with the community, as opposed to the officers that work in a correctional environment; they're in the prisons eight or 16 hours a day, and they're in there with no one but felons."
The state however is moving forward with firing 2,000 corrections officers statewide who didn't return to work Monday morning, which was part of the union agreement according to DOCCS. Supt. Daniel Martuscello announced those firings Monday evening.
“Termination letters have been sent to over 2,000 officers who remained on strike. Officers and sergeants who did not have per-approved medical leave and didn’t return by this morning, 6:45 a.m. deadline, have been terminated effective immediately,” Martuscello said.
He said a number of National Guard troops who were deployed, at one point numbering 6,000, will remain assisting prison staff at facilities statewide.
For now, most of the officers have returned to work, and Miller said talks continue to focus on improving the work conditions for the guards.
