New Deal for New York Corrections Officers Might Not Mean End to Strike

A deal that state officials hoped would bring striking corrections officers back to work doesn't appear to have gained support among the ranks, leaving the future of New York's prison system an open question.

On Thursday night, after days of mediation between state officials and representatives of the union that represents COs, an agreement was struck that seemed to address many of the major concerns cited by officers who had walked off their shifts more than a week ago.

But union support of a deal doesn't mean an immediate end to the strike — the COs striking have done so without the sanction of the union, and in violation of state law that restricts public employees from leaving their posts.

State laws regarding punishments and solitary confinement in prison have been at the core of the COs' grievances. They argue, citing state data, that violent incidents have become more common as the state has shrunk its prison population and closed dozens of facilities. They take issue with the HALT Act, which went into effect in 2022 and requires that solitary confinement be used sparingly, and only subject to court order, while also mandating prisons provide more programming for incarcerated people and guarantee at least four hours daily of rehabilitative programming for people in solitary confinement.

The agreement detailed Thursday night included a promise that the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision commissioner would use his existing powers to suspend the programming requirements of HALT. For at least 90 days, the facilities would not be required to provide the education, therapeutic and skill-building programs required by HALT. After 30 days, a review would take place to see which aspects of those programs can be safely brought back.

After the 90-day pause, the corrections department would engage with a regular staffing review on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays when most COs are off shift, and commit to suspending HALT programming when staffing levels were deemed too low to safely run them.

The deal also outlined a plan to boost CO pay grades and funnel all legal mail sent to incarcerated people through a single security screening service, meant to cut down on the trafficking of illegal drugs into the prisons via the mail.

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Other provisions include the formation of a committee to review staffing, and an agreement not to punish officers more than the already implemented fines if they returned to work by Saturday, plus an agreement to continue the boost to overtime payments and to keep National Guard soldiers in the prisons for an undefined length of time.

Soldiers from the New York Army National Guard, reservists who make $165 per 12-hour shift and are on leave from civilian jobs, are expected to remain in the prisons for another six months to a year while policies are adjusted and long-term plans are approved.

State and union officials stressed that Thursday's agreement had to go to the striking COs, and each individual officer had to evaluate if it was sufficient to return to work.

As of Friday morning, demonstrations outside prisons across New York continued. The grassroots nature of the strikes has made it difficult to determine how many COs are striking — almost all facilities with a demonstration have some officers still on shift, and prison leadership remains in place.

COs who spoke with the Watertown Daily Times on condition of anonymity, to avoid potential legal action against them by state officials, said they were not convinced the deal was enough. Four COs from separate institutions have said that they didn't feel that the changes to HALT were going to be enough to assure their safety in the future, and were disappointed that demands to require body scans of all visitors and that the prisons engage with a secured vendor for all package service weren't included in the deal.

They expressed disappointment that the union had backed the deal, and spoke to an undercurrent of distrust in the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents COs.

While the Republicans aligned with the COs have stressed that they stand with the union, COs and their families have quietly indicated a lack of trust and a feeling that CO demands are not being defended seriously enough.

"What they're doing isn't sustainable, and it's so disheartening to not have anybody listen to us, even our own union," one CO said. "I suspect a lot, like myself, will be looking for other jobs."

Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul, when asked by reporters at an event in Rochester, said she did not think that many COs would reject the deal. She said the protests outside facilities shouldn't be taken as evidence that a majority of striking officers are dissatisfied with the plan.

"What you're seeing out at the sites is not all the corrections officers, many of them are at home," she said. "What you're seeing out there are some of them. Many are retirees and many are members of the community who have come out."

Hochul said her team are working to contact as many officers as possible to communicate the terms of their deal.

Later Friday, some striking officers and their families met with a lawyer — Michael H. Sussman, a civil rights lawyer from Goshen also running as a Republican to be the Orange County executive.

Sussman, in a letter to the state-appointed mediator, requested a five-day delay in penalties and an opportunity for families and striking COs to negotiate with him directly, rather than through the union.

In his letter, Sussman said the officers continued to demand a full suspension of the HALT programming provisions until a more thorough review than the union-negotiated deal contains, and a commitment to mandatory body scans for visitors and more secure screening for mail and packages sent to inmates. They also continued to push for an improvement in their pension tier ranking, higher starting salaries and a commitment to a reversal of the fines and penalties already charged to striking officers.

"I am writing to formally reject the proposed Consent Award," Sussman wrote. "This agreement fails to address the root causes of the crisis that led to the strike and instead weaponizes punitive laws against officers."

It's not clear what the next steps for the state prison system are going to be. The union is urging its members to return to work, and if they do so by Saturday, no further penalties will be enforced. If they don't return, they could be fired, fined or potentially arrested for violating a court order issued Feb. 21. State officials have already started civil actions against a few dozen COs identified as on strike. It's not clear if those cases will continue if the named officers return to work.

While the officers have been on strike, conditions inside the prisons have remained tense. Inmates reported dayslong lockdowns, and prisoner movements have been restricted at each facility since the first wave of officer walkouts. Showers, scheduled mealtimes, programs, education, medical care, work details and free time have been canceled indefinitely while the National Guard members serve as the ground-level authority figures in the prisons.

Reports of unchecked inmate-on-inmate violence have spread, although DOCCS officials have characterized many reports as misinformation.

State officials have said those conditions are untenable and must be corrected, but without a significant number of officers returning to the prisons, it will be left to the largely untrained National Guard troops to maintain order and security within the facilities.

The state prisons have already been facing serious staffing shortages. DOCCS Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello III recently issued a memo to all staff indicating that the system was facing a structural staffing deficit. He ordered at the time that all prisons should reduce their staffing models to 70% of their standing plans. Officials walked that back in the first days of the strikes, but it doesn't change the fact that DOCCS doesn't have enough staff to fill the open positions in the 44 state prisons it operates.

As the number of people incarcerated has shrunk to roughly half of its 1999 peak, and the state has closed 26 prisons since 1999, CO headcounts have shrunk more slowly.

At its peak in 1999, New York had more than 70 prisons and 72,600 inmates, managed by a staff of more than 23,000 COs. The number of COs rose a little in the early to mid-2000s, and then began dropping through the 2010s and 2020s. Now, to manage about 33,000 incarcerated people, the state has a staff of about 13,000 COs.

A mass resignation of striking COs could make that under-staffing much worse.

In her budget amendments released last week, Hochul asked for the power to close up to five state prisons with 90 days' notice — a power she was given in last year's budget that she used to close two facilities. If CO shortages continue, the state could turn to closures and consolidation to reduce the impact of staffing shortages.

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