By Alex Gault
Watertown Daily Times, N.Y.
NEW YORK — Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul is seeking permission to close five more state prisons with 90 days of notice in the next fiscal year — even as the state’s prison system attempts to recover from an ongoing strike of correction officers and a handful of prisoner riots.
On Thursday night, Hochul’s office released her thirty-day budget amendments, essentially corrections and inclusions to be made to her original executive budget proposal released a month ago. Besides cleaning up some mathematical errors and altering proposals to respond to changing circumstances, Hochul also added in a fairly standard clause that would give her office the power to close up to five state prisons with 90 days of notice.
The governor always has the power to close a facility, but needs to give a full year of notice under existing state law. In recent budget proposals, the governor has repeatedly asked for the power to close a handful of prisons per year with the expedited 90 day notice.
Last year, the governor moved to close two of the five prisons she had the power to close — the year before she made no closures, and in 2022 the state moved to close six state prisons.
A system that once had 71 facilities now has just 42 — that’s matched a precipitous drop in the number of people put in prison in New York, down to about 33,000 today from a peak of nearly 73,000 inmates in 1999.
CO ranks have shrunk more slowly, but now the system is facing structural shortstaffing issues that forced DOCCS officials to move to a new staffing model at 70% of previous requirements. That move was canceled in the wake of a recent rash of unsanctioned CO strikes, where hundreds of officers have walked off the job to demand better pay, safer conditions and an end to state policies that restrict how they can punish inmates.
Those strikes have thrown the prison system into chaos, with Corrections Emergency Response Teams being deployed to a number of facilities where the incarcerated people had taken over parts of the complex — including at Riverview Correctional in Ogdensburg.
With those conditions in mind, Hochul’s Thursday amendments were met with criticism from north country Assemblyman Scott A. Gray, R- Watertown.
“The state has already closed two prisons this year, and we’ve seen the disastrous consequences,” he said. “Now, the governor wants to shut down five more—it’s incomprehensible. I’ve said before that the ongoing unrest in our state’s prisons is a powder keg, and Gov. Hochul seems intent on lighting the fuse herself.”
Gray said the proposal appears retaliatory, a punishment for disobedient COs.
“There are no benefits to closing more state prisons,” he said. “Instead, thousands of jobs will be lost, communities relying on these facilities will suffer economically and the prisons that remain open will become even more dangerous. Correctional officers are already overworked and understaffed. Doubling down on policies that we can see firsthand are failing is a reckless decision that I strongly encourage her to reexamine.”
It’s not evident if the Governor will use the power to close five facilities to its full extent, or if the proposal will make it into the final state budget; all of the Governor’s proposals must be approved by the state legislature, and members of the Assembly regularly fight for that chamber to oppose further prison cuts in negotiations.
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