Legislature will soon start "holistic review" of state prison system
Mar. 25—ALBANY — The state legislature will soon be undertaking a comprehensive review of the state prison system, coming after the high-profile killing of Robert Brooks by corrections officers at an Oneida County prison in December, and a weeks-long strike of COs that ended earlier this month with the firing of 2,000 prison security staff.
On Tuesday, Speaker of the Assembly Carl E. Heastie, D-Bronx, said that legislators decided it was time to review the state prisons after Brooks' death.
"When Mr. Brooks was murdered, one of the things we talked about was trying to get a very holistic review of the state correctional system," he said.
But the legislature is waiting for the criminal investigation into Brooks' death, which has resulted in criminal charges for nearly a dozen state corrections staff involved in the case. At least 17 officers and Department of Corrections staff have been suspended without pay while the department does its own review.
Heastie said the Legislature was waiting for the investigation to move forward before starting their own review.
While the legislature is preparing to do its own review of DOCCS, there are big changes likely in the works for the department itself.
Before the CO strikes started in February the department was running on a staffing deficit of about 2,000 officers.
After the state put an end to negotiations to bring the roughly 8,000 striking staff back to work in mid-March, another 2,000 officers were fired; so the department is down about 4,000 COs. They're looking for new staff, relying on over 6,000 National Guard troops to fill in current gaps, and taking staff input on ways to change their recruiting practices.
The department is also pulling together a committee of CO's union members, other prison staff and department representatives to propose changes to the HALT Act, a state law passed in 2022 that restricts punishments and requires broad rehabilitative programming schedules in state facilities.
COs on strike took particular issue with that bill, arguing it's made their jobs severely dangerous and taken tools out of their belt for responding to bad behavior in prisons.
But that committee would have no real power to change the law itself; it would need willing state legislators to carry forward any proposed changes as legislation.
Heastie on Tuesday did not discount taking the committee's input.
"I will never refuse to listen to people's opinions," he said.
Besides the legislature's plan to review DOCCS, the Correctional Association of New York, a Brooklyn-based citizens oversight group empowered by century-old state law to watch the state's prisons, is also carrying forward with oversight and review work of its own, which CEO Jennifer Scaife told the Watertown Daily Times will include recommendations for the DOCCS HALT committee.
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