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In January, James Johnson began a journalism course at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, north of New York City, offered through Columbia University. He was eager to wrap up his bachelor’s degree and enroll in a master’s program this fall. But state correctional officers began a 22-day-long wildcat strike in February, and all educational, vocational, and mental health programs in prisons ground to a halt.
Four months after the strike ended, it’s unclear when the journalism course will restart — normal operations have yet to resume in most of the state’s prisons. Johnson likened his post-strike experience to life after a natural disaster: “The media coverage is gone, and we are still waiting on FEMA, while we try to make do with whatever scraps we can salvage from the rubble that we find ourselves standing in.”
When the illegal strike ended, more than 2,000 of the 13,000-plus striking guards were fired after they refused to return to work. That compounded an ongoing staffing shortage that partially sparked the strike itself. Thirty-five of the state’s 42 prisons are operating with an average of 32% of guard posts unfilled, New York Focus reported.
As of this week, nearly 3,000 National Guard members remain stationed in at least 34 prisons, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. In April, Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters the cost of the roughly 4,400 National Guard members’ presence at the time was “well over $10 million per month.” The governor’s office and the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs declined requests to confirm the current price tag.
While National Guard members can support prison operations, such as head count and basic supervision, they can’t fill all the responsibilities of correctional officers, such as escorting incarcerated people and intervening in violent encounters.
For incarcerated people, the lingering dysfunctions from the strike run the gamut from frustrating to life-threatening. At Auburn Correctional Facility, west of Syracuse, Bartholomew Crawford said that only one of two prison yards has been open since the strike, and it doesn’t have any sports or weightlifting equipment — just blacktop to walk or run on.
Meanwhile, civil rights and criminal defense attorney Amy Jane Agnew, who represents people in prisons throughout the state, said she’s concerned about her elderly and ill clients. Without enough officers to drive people to and from specialized doctors’ appointments, Agnew says some of her clients are going without vital medical care.
“That right now is a huge systemic problem,” said Agnew. “I’m way more worried about a guy who’s not getting his oncology visit than not getting the same amount of rec time.”
In addition to limited recreation, understaffing has led to prisoners spending more than 17 hours a day in their cells at some facilities. “It feels like a perpetual lockdown,” said Crawford, the man incarcerated at Auburn Correctional Facility.
Seventeen hours is a legally important number. Under a 2022 state law, any confinement longer than that qualifies as “segregated confinement,” and triggers special protection and restrictions.
Previously, segregated confinement was defined as 23 hours of isolation. The law, dubbed the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Law, or HALT Act, drew fervent criticism from corrections staff. They argued that the effort to reform solitary confinement put them in danger by removing a crucial disciplinary tool, and its repeal was a central demand of the strikers.
“It takes a little of the fight out of them,” striking officer Doug Langtry told CNY Central in February, referring to incarcerated people. “It used to work all the time.”
A temporary suspension of some provisions of the law was among the 14 concessions the Corrections Department made to the officers’ union to end the strike. The Legal Aid Society of New York challenged the suspension, temporarily winning its reinstatement in early July. This week, lawyers for the society argued in a court filing that the department continues to defy that court order, keeping people isolated in cells without access to programming for more than 21 hours a day.
Johnson and his fellow incarcerated students haven’t been told when classes might start again, he said. The school building at Sing Sing houses a range of programming and classes, but Johnson said it has been inaccessible since the strike began. Laura Roan, vice president of in-prison services at the Osborne Association, helps run a parenting program in that school building. “Across the board, we’re struggling with almost all of our programs being able to operate as normal,” said Roan.
The ongoing partial closure of facilities like Sing Sing’s school building and missed medical appointments reflect the system’s shortage of 4,700 correctional officers, according to James Miller, a spokesperson for the guard’s union, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association. Understaffing has also inhibited visits from family and loved ones, limiting them to weekends at most facilities, shortening visit times, and ending programs such as a “summer camp” at Bedford Hills that previously enabled women to spend multiple hours per day with their children for a brief period each summer, according to Roan.
The corrections department says they are working to “aggressively recruit” officers to fill that gap, so the prisons can resume regular operations. They’ve launched recruitment centers throughout the state, and earlier this month announced a new agreement with the union to offer sign-on and retention bonuses. In May, lawmakers passed Hochul’s budget, which decreased the age cap for prison guards from 21 to 18 and removed the state’s residency requirement.
Recruitment alone may not be able to resolve the agency’s staffing issues. As New York Focus reported, the department has long struggled with guards not showing up to work, with officers engaging in “sick-outs.” These absences contribute to the prison system’s costly overtime expenses: In 2024, the department spent $445 million on 7.4 million hours of overtime pay, as reported by Gothamist.
On Tuesday, Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello sent a memo to the incarcerated population offering an update on the system’s broader “recover, recruit and rebuild” post-strike campaign. The memo announced that all phone calls will become free for incarcerated callers as of Aug. 1, highlighting the change as part of a broader goal to “rebuild the progressive corrections system that mirrors our values and protects the human dignity of all.”
As the department slowly presses forward, the efforts to adapt and resume normal operations are clear to Jaquan Myers, who is incarcerated at Washington Correctional Facility, east of Adirondack State Park. While the changes have been slow, he can see the progress.
“They’re trying,” said Myers, “but they’re still short-staffed.”
To investigate prison staffing trends in your own state, you can use our reporting toolkit, which includes state-specific data and other resources.
