A Year After The Corrections Officer Strike, New York Is Still Failing Its Incarcerated Population

In February of 2025, New York State correctional staff began an illegal work stoppage to challenge recent changes to the state’s carceral system. Their primary objective was to force the repeal of the Humane Alternatives to Longterm Solitary Confinement Act (also known as the HALT Act), a bill that is part of a larger initiative prioritizing the health of the imprisoned and our successful reentry into society. This bill mandates prisoners receive seven hours of congregate time outside our cells each day and otherwise limits “excessive” use of solitary confinement. In response to the strike, Governor Kathy Hochul suspended the HALT Act for 90 days and pursued a mediation, which ultimately ended with many officers returning to work and those who refused being fired—some 2,000 officers. The HALT Act’s policies should have been reinstated by May 21, 2025. However, it has been over 13 months since the work stoppage ended, and prisoners like myself are still living without access to recreation, programs, and the visits we are entitled to. I currently reside at Elmira Correctional Facility, which in my experience did not adhere to most of the rules that benefited the imprisoned population even prior to the work stoppage. The administration has gone months at a time without operating most programs, including ones that must be completed before our release, even though we are entitled to consistent program access. Local visiting practices prevented spouses from sitting near their incarcerated partners, despite directives explicitly stating that our visitors should be permitted to rest their heads on our shoulders. Our mail, packages, and electronic mail content were almost never processed in a timely manner, and the systems in place to remedy these institutional failures have always been inherently flawed. Since the work stoppage, things have gotten even worse. Recreation has been reduced to less than an hour per day. Most prisoners have not been afforded the opportunity to participate in any programs in over a year. Prisoners aren’t even permitted to walk to the cafeteria for lunch. Instead, our lunch—usually a bag with sandwiches—is brought to our cells every afternoon, denying us both the brief respite from the isolation of our cells and whatever warm food we would have been given for lunch that day. With less than an hour of recreation, no opportunity to program, and only two opportunities to go to the cafeteria, prisoners are forced to stay in our cells more than 22 hours each day.