Why NY Prison Guards Really Went on Strike

Robert Brooks died in the hospital on December 10 of last year, one day after he was brutally beaten by a group of prison guards inside Marcy Correctional Facility in Marcy, New York. Guards savagely attacked Brooks while he lay handcuffed and helpless on an infirmary bed.

Video of the deadly beating was so shocking that even the corrections union that represented the officers involved condemned the killing. In the wake of Brooks’ death and the outrage it generated, Gov. Hochul and other state leaders vowed to implement changes in the state prison system that has long failed to hold guards responsible when they brutalize incarcerated people.

Right at the moment when it seemed like prison guards might face accountability and true oversight, corrections officers at 42 prisons across New York walked off the job and began an illegal strike.

As Brooks’ father, Robert Ricks wrote in a recent Times Union op-ed, officers “staged an illegal walkout — not to protest the violence, but to avoid accountability.” Sadly, the guards’ gambit appears to have paid off.

Since Brooks’ death, Albany lawmakers made a few small legislative changes to attempt to counter the deeply-ingrained culture of violence in our prisons. But the biggest impact of the strikes has been a successful effort to roll back critical pieces of a law designed to make prisons safer by limiting the use of solitary confinement.

Torture by Another Name 

HALT limits the indiscriminate and long-term use of solitary. It bars prisons and jails from sending very young people, elderly folks, and those with serious mental illness or disabilities to solitary. It prohibits prison officials from placing individuals in solitary confinement for more than 15 consecutive days, or 20 days total over a 60-day period, except in very limited situations.

HALT is a moral and public safety imperative. Putting limits on solitary makes both folks inside and correctional staff safer. Eliminating solitary confinement reduces violence, improves interactions between incarcerated individuals and correctional staff, and improves the health and well-being of incarcerated individuals and staff alike.

The United Nations has long acknowledged that more than 15 days spent in solitary amounts to torture, and even correctional leadership – including former correctional leadership in New York State – agree. It exacerbates mental and emotional health issues that already plague people who are incarcerated, and it corrodes any hope of trust between the prison population and the institution itself.

HALT Was Never Fully Implemented

Ever since HALT was passed, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) has refused to follow the law. Instead, DOCCS has consistently undermined HALT and prevented it from fully going into effect.

DOCCS is still holding people in solitary confinement unlawfully and, in many cases, the department is locking people in without providing them any time out of their cells, which is never allowed under HALT.

DOCCS is also illegally holding people in extended segregated confinement for weeks and even months at a time. In some cases, the department is putting people in this type of confinement without first conducting any disciplinary hearing at all.

DOCCS’s noncompliance and the continued proliferation of solitary confinement in New York prisons has been the subject of many lawsuits, including the NYCLU’s recent case in which a judge ruled in our favor. Yet our fight to ensure DOCCS adheres to HALT continues because the department is flouting the court’s order. Even after the judge ordered it not to do so, DOCCS continues to put people in solitary confinement in violation of the law.

As a result of DOCCS’s disregard for HALT, the population of people held in solitary confinement has increased, not decreased, since the law went into effect. This means the state subjects more and more New Yorkers to the abusive practices the HALT Act was designed to eliminate.

The Strike’s Legacy and What We Need Now

The strikes had serious and lethal consequences. During the walkouts, at least one incarcerated person was allegedly murdered by DOCCS staff at a prison just across the street from where Robert Brooks was beaten to death.

The strikes also exacerbated the harms of solitary confinement while feeding into DOCCS’ attempts to undermine HALT.

In a further attempt to weaken the law, the agency created a HALT Committee that seeks changes to the law and remains shrouded in secrecy.

DOCCS’s ramped up efforts to undermine solitary confinement endanger incarcerated New Yorkers, especially those who are Black and Brown since these New Yorkers make up a disproportionate number of people in our prisons.

Instead of doubling down on the torturous, abusive, and inhumane practice of solitary confinement, DOCCS must finally follow the law that so many successfully fought for.