News cycles over the last six weeks have been action-packed, so you may have missed a story of serious importance — the strike of corrections officers across New York’s prison system. It’s a story, your Editorial Team believes, that carries with it solemn and bracing implications for not only COs, inmates and the families of both, but for how we do criminal justice and the rule of law itself.

The “wildcat” strike, which started on or about Feb. 17, has thrown more than 30 prisons, including those in Ulster County, into a state of dangerous turmoil. Strikers say they’re walking the picket line because their jobs have become impossible to do; they primarily blame the state’s 2022 law which reformed and restricted solitary confinement but concerns about understaffing and too much required overtime are also cited. It’s estimated that nine out of every 10 corrections officers left their posts; like teachers and other state workers, the state’s Taylor Law prohibits them from striking. To keep the system from failing entirely, an estimated 7,000 New York National Guard troops have been called up and sent in, with minimal equipment and less training, to do their best. The situation for New York’s 30,000 inmates becomes grimmer by the day; reports from all over tell of endless lockdowns, unreliable food service and lack of medical attention. According to The New York Times, at least seven inmates have died since the strike began.

While Gov. Hochul thought this weekend that she had a deal to end the strike, as of press time, it’s still going on at most prisons. According to media reports, strikes at Shawangunk in Ulster County and Green Haven and Fishkill in Dutchess, as well as Sing Sing further downstate, have ended. They still continue to some extent at Eastern and Ulster out in Napanoch; it’s not immediately clear whether what was going on there Tuesday is still the strike or just a protest.

Let’s take a look at the law the guards want to go away: “The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, known as HALT, passed in 2022 after lobbying by inmate rights groups who claim that keeping prisoners locked in their cells virtually around the clock was inhumane and caused serious psychological harm,” we wrote last week. “The act limits solitary confinement — defined as being held in a cell for 18 hours or longer in a 24-hour period — to three consecutive days or six days in a given 30-day period. Inmates whose conduct is “heinous or destructive” may be held in solitary for up to 15 days or 20 days in any 60-day period. The law, which applies to both state prisons and local jails, bans solitary confinement entirely for inmates under 22 or over 54 years old or who are disabled or pregnant. Inmates who are determined to need more than the 15-day maximum sentence may be segregated from the general population in separate ‘Residential Recovery Units’ where they must receive ‘trauma-informed’ therapy and treatment aimed at addressing the underlying cause of their disruptive behavior.”

Besides being ruinous for inmates’ mental health, solitary confinement is a time-honored prison management tool which allows staff to separate acutely dangerous individuals from everybody else, preventing all manner of mayhem and violence. Striking guards say they can’t keep anybody safe, much less themselves, if they must abide by stricter rules for its use.

“While the strike is not sanctioned by the New York State Corrections Officers Police Benevolent Association, the union has complained that the HALT act has led to spiraling violence in prisons statewide and makes it nearly impossible for officers to cope with the system’s most violent and disruptive inmates,” we wrote. “In an Oct. 31 statement, NYSCOPBA officials reported that inmate-on-staff assaults were on track [in 2024] to break a record set in 2023 representing a 47 percent increase since the passage of the HALT Act. Inmate-on-inmate assaults, meanwhile, rose by 118 since 2021. ‘We have repeatedly presented the reality of the unsafe work environment facing our members, exacerbated by a weakened disciplinary system, staffing shortages, and mandatory overtime that have pushed staff to the brink,’ NYSCOPBA President Chris Summers said in the October statement. ‘State policies have directly contributed to this current state and need to be addressed immediately.’”

Hochul had agreed on Friday to suspend HALT for 90 days to get guards back to work, along with other concessions. It’s questionable that she actually has the authority to do that, but one thing she absolutely cannot unilaterally do is make it go away for good. It’s a passed and signed (by Hochul herself) law, so it would need to be repealed. By the same legislature which has gone pretty far left in criminal justice matters over the past few years and may be unwilling to give up ground on this issue. Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, in a release last week where she defended the right to strike in the abstract but attacked those who are doing it, called repeal a “non-starter”; while she doesn’t speak for everyone in the Assembly, it is an indication that HALT won’t go without a struggle.

(Just a couple of side notes to Shrestha, who said in her release that a drop in violent incidents since the National Guard moved in indicated, in her view, the conditions that led to the strike were “driven more by recklessness than by necessity.” When inmates are on lockdown, of course violence is going to drop. Implying that people with zero training and experience can somehow run a prison better than the professionals insults not only those professionals but reason itself. And as for her argument that, as per her release, the strike is a strategic move to uphold a “racist and anti-poor carceral system,” all we can say is really? Who will be the first and the most victimized when the prisons are shut down and hundreds of violent people are returned to the ultimate general population? The same people socialists claim to be working to help — the poor.)

It's an unfortunate reality that in this ugly and heartbreaking world in which we live we need prisons. The whole distasteful business of incarceration brings us face-to-face with how far short our ideals about humanity fall in the face of crime and those who commit it. Like sending our trash outside of our county for someone else to deal with, we do the same trick with violent, predatory humans — dump them where we can't see them, and pay the COs to deal with them. Out of sight, out of mind, right? If anything, this strike puts problems many of us would prefer to ignore right in our laps.

We need prisons to be run with justice and fairness, but even more than that, we need them to be run. Your Editorial Team thinks it’s time for the bleeding-hearts-vs.-punishment-freaks politics surrounding corrections to maybe spend 30 days in the hole while a big conversation among lawmakers, advocates and those who actually have to do the job tries to make a sustainable model going forward.