Correction officers across New York currently striking say their frustration has hit a boiling point.

What You Need To Know

  • Officers from more than 20 of New York's correctional facilities are striking due to working conditions

  • There were more than 2,000 assaults on prison staff in 2024, per DOCCS

  • The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement, or HALT Act, went into effect in 2022

  • The law limits the use of segregated confinement and ends it completely for anyone who is pregnant, living with a disability, over the age of 55 or under 21. It also requires alternatives for rehabilitation

  • Correction officers have railed against the law, arguing the HALT Act gives officers less of an authority

“They don’t care if they lose their job anymore because they’re already quitting and resigning anyway,” said Vinny Blasio, a retired New York state correction lieutenant. “They said, ‘I have nothing else to lose and no one is listening.’ ”

There were more than 2,000 assaults on prison staff in 2024 — almost double the number seen in 2020 — according to the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS).

“If you look at the assaults, they’re at an all-time high now and with the HALT Act, there’s no penalties. So you’re taking an individual that cannot behave in society, remove them from society, he’s in prison, cannot behave in prison and the most he can get is a 15-day penalty. [It] doesn’t make sense,” Blasio said.

The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement, or HALT Act, went into effect in 2022. 

The law limits the use of segregated confinement and ends it completely for anyone who is pregnant, living with a disability, over the age of 55 or under 21. It also requires alternatives for rehabilitation.

“Isolation does not work to help anybody,” said Jerome R. Wright, co-director of the HALT Solitary Campaign. “You don’t have a problem, you put it away in isolation and then go back and get it and expect it to have solved itself.”

Correction officers have railed against the law, arguing the HALT Act gives officers less of an authority.

“There used to be drug testing for inmates, which there is no longer. There used to be penalties for drugs, which there is no longer,” Blasio said. “The HALT Act, even if it’s not repealed in its entirety, that needs to be examined. There needs to be consequences, because if there’s no consequences, there’s no society, and the inmates feel that they can do whatever they want and they’re emboldened.”

HALT advocacy organizations believe it is an integral part of the prison system.

“You don’t send somebody to solitary and they get better, they come out better. They come out worse from that experience,” said Wright. “The idea is that you segregate somebody from the general population by putting them in the residential rehabilitation unit, where they get congregate activities like recreation [and] congregate meals, so you learn how to interact with people on a social level.”

It's unclear if the state Legislature is willing to make changes to the law, but both sides are hoping to come to some resolve that makes the system better for everyone in it.