How Prison Guards Used An Illegal Strike To Fight Reform

A three-weeklong wildcat strike by thousands of New York state correctional officers across more than 40 prisons ended earlier this month, during which time 12 incarcerated people died, and many more struggled from weeks of being deprived of adequate food, medical care, time out of their cell, and access to their lawyers and loved ones.

Striking prison guards cited staffing shortages, mandatory overtime and dangerous working conditions as their reasons for walking off the job. But the strike was also the result of a years-long effort by correctional officers to overturn a state law limiting the use of solitary confinement in New York state prisons and jails. Passed in 2021 and implemented the following year, the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act (HALT), capped the number of consecutive days a person could be kept in solitary confinement to 15 days — after which point the United Nations considers it a form of torture. HALT also banned solitary for people with disabilities.

The bill was passed in recognition of overwhelming evidence of the harmful physical and mental health effects of solitary confinement. But shortly after it passed, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association (NYSCOPBA), the union that represents prison guards, sued state officials in an effort to repeal HALT, claiming the reform bill violated their constitutional rights by putting them at risk of injury or death.

“The harm to life and limb of Correction Officers and Correction Sergeants that has been and will continue to occur constitutes irreparable harm and shocks the contemporary conscience,” they alleged in a complaint.

A judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2022 as “speculative,” but the correctional officers union vowed to keep fighting to overturn the law. Starting in mid-February, approximately 15,000 correctional officers at nearly every New York state prison walked off their jobs. The strike was unsanctioned by the union and violated a state ban on public employees striking. Still, the union succeeded in one of their long-held goals. Earlier this month, the strike ended with state officials agreeing to, among other provisions, suspending parts of HALT for 90 days and agreeing to form a committee to recommend changes to the law.

“The strike was clearly a frontal assault on HALT and its protections,” Antony Gemmell, a supervising attorney for the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society, told HuffPost.

It was unlikely New York state lawmakers would repeal HALT, James Miller, NYSCOPBA’s director of public relations said in an interview, “so at least getting some temporary amendments to limit how it’s implemented is a success.”

Throughout the strike, lawyers at the Legal Aid Society received hundreds of calls from their clients, describing a “flood of human desperation,” Kayla Simpson, a staff attorney at Legal Aid’s Prisoners’ Rights Project said. “It’s hard to imagine as people who haven’t been incarcerated what it’s like to depend on people for your basic needs — and then to have those people walk away.”

“This is not an acceptable way to meet labor demands. People died, far more have suffered,” Simpson said. “We wouldn’t accept these conditions for animals.”

Simpson and her colleagues compiled some of the accounts shared by Legal Aid clients into a report released on Friday, which documents the human cost of the illegal strike. Legal Aid did not disclose the identities of those quoted in the report because of fears of retaliation, and HuffPost could not independently confirm their accounts.

Multiple people told Legal Aid that their facilities had shut down “sick call,” leaving them unable to get medical care. One person incarcerated at Attica Correctional Facility told Legal Aid he was unable to get supplies to clean and dress chronic ulcers related to a blood clot in his leg, causing his leg to swell and the wound to produce foul-smelling pus. Another person at Attica, who has epilepsy, reported being ignored after reporting symptoms that typically lead to a seizure. A third person at Attica, who had open-heart surgery in 2020 and has atrial fibrillation, said their weekly medical visits stopped during the strike.

“I haven’t gotten the medications I’m supposed to have in two weeks. I have one I can administer to myself, but I’m running out so I’m rationing it and it is not good. I don’t know what I’m going to do,” a person incarcerated at Marcy Correctional Facility said. “I also am supposed to have physical therapy to help me relearn to walk, but that’s deemed ‘non-essential’ so it’s canceled.”

An individual at Five Points Correctional Facility told Legal Aid they experienced seizures and COVID symptoms during the strike but still couldn’t get medical care. “They’re playing with our lives in here,” the person said. “The other day I must have been laying there for 20-30 minutes and no one saw me. I woke up in a lot of pain, and no one even realized anything was happening until I yelled out after the fact. When I told a nurse about it, she told me to yell louder next time.”

Nicole Whitaker, the deputy director of public information at New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, said in an email, “The Department remains focused on keeping everyone inside the correctional facilities safe and secure, as well as providing essential services including but not limited to meals, showers, telephones, commissary and delivery of packages, along with medical and mental health care, including medication.” Allegations of mistreatment have been referred to the Office of Special Investigations, she wrote.

“There were 12 incarcerated individual deaths during the strike, as compared to 13 deaths in the same period last year,” Whitaker wrote.

Even after the strike ended earlier this month, incarcerated people told Legal Aid attorneys that they continued to experience neglectful conditions and hostility from returning officers. Several said they feared being injured or even killed by guards, citing the murder of Robert Brooks, who was fatally beaten by correctional officers in December at the prison in Marcy.

One person incarcerated at Mid-State Correctional Facility told Legal Aid he overheard a correction officer who had recently returned to work say he wanted to “kill all the inmates and that we all deserved to die because of our criminal history,” according to the report.

“Whatever the COs are going through, they’re taking their anger out on us and bringing it back to us,” another person, who is incarcerated at Coxsackle Correctional Facility, told Legal Aid. “I understand that most of us made wrong turns in life, but I want to go home. I don’t want to get killed in here. I have kids and family to get home to, and a lot of us are starting to feel like our lives are in real danger here.”

Asked about these fears, Whitaker wrote, “While the strike has ended, we are not out of the crisis. Each facility is developing a gradual re-opening plan. In terms of the allegations, those that have been reported by an incarcerated individual claiming mistreatment have been referred to OSI for further investigation.”

Although DOCCS tracks assaults by incarcerated people against staff, it does not publicly share statistics about staff assaults against the incarcerated. DOCCS data does show an increase in assaults on staff after HALT went into effect, although the overwhelming majority are described as resulting in “no injury.” The department considers actions by prisoners like throwing a “small object” at a staffer to be a form of assault.

Last year, the Legal Aid Society, Disability Rights Advocates, and Winston & Strawn LLP filed a class action lawsuit against DOCCS, accusing the department of violating HALT by holding people with disabilities in solitary confinement. DOCCS declined to comment on the pending litigation.

“DOCCS has never complied with HALT from the beginning,” said Gemmell, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the suit. “A huge part of what HALT intended to do is take people who would otherwise be placed in extended segregated confinement and offer them rehabilitation and therapy. That is not happening.”

“You can’t look at HALT and say it’s a failure when the reality is DOCCS has never given HALT a real chance to work,” said Gemmell.