New York Suspends Solitary Ban to Woo Back Striking Prison Guards
Under a deal reached at the end of February 2025 with striking state Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS) guards, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) agreed to a 90-day suspension of a law limiting use of solitary confinement in state prisons. The governor also agreed to reverse disciplinary measures taken against strikers, provided that 85% returned to work by March 10, 2025. That condition wasn’t met, and the governor fired 2,000 guards still on strike. For the rest who returned to work, she promised to honor the deal anyway.
The partial suspension of the law, 2021’s “Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement” (HALT) Act, allows guards once again to use isolation with prisoners who are pregnant, disabled, over the age of 55 or under the age of 21, and there will be no limits on the number of consecutive days any prisoner spends in isolation.
The deal to end the strike was reached with the guards’ union, the state Corrections Officers and Police Benevolent Association (COPBA), which was barred under state law from sponsoring the strike. The agreement was sufficient to end the strike entirely at state lockups in Green Haven, Fishkill, Shawangunk, Hudson, Taconic and Sing Sing, according to DOCCS Director Daniel Martuscello.
But guards at other prisons remained on the strike line, demanding freedom to isolate “violent” prisoners, which is prohibited by part of the HALT Act that remains in force. State Sen. Mark Walczyk (R- Watertown) called that limitation “offensive.” Hochul, however, decided that she’d given strikers enough carrots and started pulling out sticks: Their health insurance was canceled on March 5, 2025, by which point 10 had been fired and over 350 cited for civil contempt by the office of state Attorney General Letitia James (D).
As PLN reported, the strike began not with passage of the HALT Act three years ago but shortly after 16 staffers were suspended in January 2025—10 of whom were indicted the following month—over the fatal beating of prisoner Robert L. Brooks, 43, at Marcy Correctional Facility. Across the street, another 15 guards were put on leave at Mid-State Correctional Facility after another prisoner, Messiah Nantwi, 22, was fatally beaten on March 1, 2025, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Mar. 2025, p.61; and Apr. 2025, p.54.]
The coincidence in the strike’s timing and the discipline of errant guards called into question what the work stoppage was really about. James got a state judge in Erie County to order the wildcat strikers back to work on February 18, 2025, while Hochul began calling up the first of some 7,000 National Guard troops eventually deployed to provide security at state prisons. But their presence was still insufficient to lift lockdowns preventing many prisoners from receiving programming and medical care—even meals in some lockups.
State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services Commissioner Jackie Bray said that the state would not only fire the wildcat strikers but also fine them, citing a provision of the Taylor Law triggered after 10 consecutive days of unauthorized work stoppage. But under the deal Hochul signed with COPBA, all those fines will be canceled for those who returned to work. Any provisional terminations or contempt citations issued to them were also slated for reversal. In addition, any canceled health insurance was to be restored.
James’s staff was in Erie County Superior Court for a hearing on invoking the Taylor Law on March 11, 2025, along with several hundred striking guards and their families. That same day, Hochul signed an executive order barring those who didn’t return to work and were fired from being rehired by the state. It also recommended removing them from the Central Registry of Police and Peace Officers, which would hamstring attempts to find law enforcement employment in another state. Of course, these were signed executive orders, not enacted laws, so they could be reversed just as easily.
In addition to Nantwi, at least eight other prisoners died during the strike. Not all were immediately identified, but two who were named died hours apart at Sing Sing Correctional Facility on February 26, 2025. Anthony Douglas, 66, had served 40 years of a 100-year murder sentence before he was found fatally hanged in his cell at 4:25 p.m., DOCCS said. Fellow prisoner Franklyn Dominguez, 35, was found unresponsive at 8:48 p.m., and attempts to revive him with NARCAN and CPR failed. At Auburn Correctional Facility on February 24, 2025, prisoner Jonathan Grant, 61, was also found unresponsive. Grant, who reportedly had a history of strokes, was nearly 14 years into a 34-to-40-year sentence for first-degree rape and burglary.
The 22-day strike was the largest DOCCS work stoppage in 40 years. But striking guards may have the state over a barrel; there is a critical guard shortage, despite robust recruitment efforts, and the walkout left thousands of National Guard troops still deployed in state lockups.
Sources: Gothamist, New York Times, WIVB, WJFF
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