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New York correctional officers led a series of strikes and protests this week that plunged the state’s prison system into turmoil, causing lockdowns, suspended visitations — including from legal counsel — and the deployment of the National Guard. Representatives for the officers have said the strikes are intended to force the state to address unsafe working conditions and severe staff shortages. Their efforts — which were not sanctioned by the correctional officers’ union and are illegal under state law — spread to nearly all the state’s prisons.
The strike isn’t the only reason state corrections officers were in the spotlight this week. On Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that nine corrections officers were indicted on various charges related to the December beating death of Robert Brooks, who had been incarcerated at the state’s Marcy Correctional Facility. Five of those officers were indicted for murder. Body camera footage appears to show that Brooks was handcuffed and compliant when several officers punched, kicked and choked him in a brutal assault. He died hours later, and a medical examiner’s report ruled his death a homicide.
For some critics of the state prison system, the timing of the labor strike isn’t coincidental. “It is intended to deflect attention from a moment of reckoning for New York’s violent prison system and culture of impunity,” former New York prisoner Thomas Gant said in a statement. Gant now works as a community organizer at the anti-incarceration nonprofit Center for Community Alternatives.
There is some precedent for officers creating disruptions when a facility was receiving negative attention, reported New York Focus earlier this week. For example, in 2013, “New York City corrections officers responsible for transporting people from Rikers Island stopped working the day an incarcerated person was supposed to testify about a caught-on-video beating he endured at the hands of guards.”
Several incarcerated people whom The Marshall Project reached out to this week agreed with Gant’s assessment of the timing. “I think it goes without saying,” said Mark Edwards, who is incarcerated at the medium-security Wyoming Correctional Facility in Attica, New York.
Edwards said that prison life started to slow on Monday, with all educational programming, recreation and mail delivery halted, alongside visitation.
For others behind bars in New York, the strike is more dire. One person incarcerated at Auburn Correctional Facility told The Auburn Citizen that he hasn’t received treatment for an infection due to the strike. Others have reported that their facility has skipped serving some meals since the strike began, and some incarcerated people have expressed concerns over timely access to medication.
Several corrections workers involved in the strike reached by The Marshall Project declined to comment on the record. Participants have generally pegged the timing to two developments unrelated to the indictments of officers in the Brooks case. One is a Feb. 12 incident at Collins Correctional Facility where incarcerated people were briefly in control of a dorm after officers retreated, citing safety concerns. Officers have also said they were motivated by a Feb. 10 memo from state Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martuscello III suggesting that moving forward, “70% of our original staffing model is the new 100%.”
Striking officers have demanded better pay, increased searches of prison visitors, limits on mandatory overtime and the reversal of recent prison reforms that limit solitary confinement. Some officers have blamed the reforms, along with low staffing levels, for increasing rates of prison violence in the years since its passage. They have also expressed health concerns related to drug exposure, but there is no clinical evidence that the symptoms some have reported — like slurred speech and fainting — are tied to accidental contact with synthetic drugs, The Albany Times-Union reported earlier this month.
“They’ve had enough. They don’t care if it’s going to cost them their job,” Pamela Welch, executive treasurer of the corrections union, told Spectrum News. “They’re tired of going into work every single day, being unsafe and being treated worse than the inmates, and they’ve reached their boiling point.” The union has not sanctioned the strike, but Welch said the actions were “understandable.”
On Thursday, Martuscello offered several concessions to the strikers, including the suspension of some aspects of the 2021 HALT Act, which limits solitary confinement in state prisons. Corrections officers have fought the reform, arguing that solitary is an important tool for managing violent and disruptive behavior. The suspension is on a temporary, emergency basis, however, and a permanent change to the law would require an act of the state Legislature. Spectrum News reported this week that there is currently no momentum for such a change. Martuscello also granted a reprieve from discipline for strike participants, provided they returned to work by midnight Thursday.
As of Saturday morning, the strike was still ongoing, however, with mediation efforts planned for Monday. It’s unclear whether striking workers will receive offers of amnesty again.
Joseph Wilson at the Green Haven prison in Stormville told The Marshall Project that the striking guards violated the law and their contract, and should face accountability. “Imagine being locked in a room, and you're waiting for someone to feed you, to get your medication,” Wilson said.
For guards who disregarded that responsibility, Wilson said: “I wouldn't be able to trust them again.”
Wilson was one of several incarcerated New Yorkers who told The Marshall Project he was sympathetic to the corrections officials' anger about long shifts and inadequate pay, but all bristled at demands for increased use of solitary confinement and other expansions of punitive measures in New York prisons.
“They're asking to repeal the whole bill? Would they like to repeal the scientific evidence [that it’s] torture?” said Nikko Colon, who, like Edwards, is incarcerated at Wyoming Correctional Facility. He described his experiences in solitary, where he said he was denied decent food and opportunities to shower, as “excruciating.”
Asked how he hopes the strike will end, Colon said: “I would like for these people to get back to work and do their jobs right,” — with emphasis on that final word.
