New York state lawmakers are divided on Gov. Kathy Hochul's budget proposal to let 18-year-olds work as correction officers in state prisons to ease the ongoing staffing shortage.

Hochul is pushing to lower the minimum age of correction officers down from 21 after firing about 2,000 officers who participated in last month's illegal wildcat strike — fueling tensions in prisons that were already battling a shortage of 2,000 officers.

The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) has about 5,000 open correction officer positions.

"We're still trying to put it back together," the governor told reporters Saturday. "It's going to be a long effort, but I have to do it. It's my job."

Hochul wants to adjust the minimum age for COs, but impose stricter rules for 18-to-20-year-old hires, including not carrying a firearm and giving them jobs that limit interaction with the incarcerated population.

"It would be more supervised activities and to get them into the pipeline," Hochul said. "Because I will tell you this, it's more hard to find people who want to go into law enforcement at any level."

DOCCS Commissioner Daniel Martuscello supports Hochul's proposal to let 18-year-olds work as correction officers and bolster low staffing numbers. The department has about 5,000 open CO positions. 

"Commissioner Martuscello is in favor of anything that increases our ability to recruit and retain the next generation of correctional professionals," DOCCS said in a statement Monday.

Republicans have blasted the governor for firing the COs who went on strike — arguing recent disciplinary and programming changes in prisons have made working conditions unsafe for staffers. 

State Assemblyman John Lemondes Jr., a Republican from LaFayette, said 18 is too young and he would advise his children against it.

"If that was their chosen career field, that's fine, but not at 18," he told Spectrum News 1. "I think you need more life experience before you go into that environment."

But Hochul says she would have let her own son do the job when he was 18, and drew a parallel to 18-year-olds drafted to serve in Vietnam when she was growing up.

"We put guns in their hands in a foreign country and expect them to have the maturity of someone many years older, and I certainly think we can put confidence with training and supervisory activity and bring them along in the family at age 18," the governor said.

A few thousand members of the National Guard continue to boost security in state prisons — costing the state over $100 million each month.

State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislatice Caucus Chair Michaelle Solages supports the age adjustment to rectify the unexpected high cost.

“We’re losing millions and millions of dollars and we need to rectify that,” Solages said. “The proposals by the governor, I think, are common sense. ...I think we need to use every tool in our toolkit to make sure we are stabilizing our correctional facilties in New York state."

Several lawmakers declined to comment on ongoing budget negotiations.

But the reservations against the propopsal are bipartisan, and several lawmakers and caucus members aren't on board.

"I have ambivalent feelings about it, but I do understand the urgency for us to recruit more correction offiers and fill the many vacant positions so that prisons are able to actually follow the law and treat people humanely," said state Sen. Julia Salazar, who chairs the Senate Crime Victims, Crime & Correction Committee. "I can at least say I appreciate the initiative and the effort to try to adequately staff those positions."

Martuscello addressed efforts to recruit the next generation of correction officers in a video posted on DOCCS social media pages April 8.

"Everywhere I visit, the message is loud and clear: We need more COs," he said. "...I hear it all the time – 'I’d recruit my nephew, buddy, daughter to join our ranks but it feels too hard to put them through this now.' I get it. But it won’t get better until we all work to recruit more COs. If every employee could recruit just one person, we would not have a staffing problem."

Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay said Monday lowering the eligibility age would add officers to DOCCS' fleet, but 18 years old is younger than the criteria for other law enforcement positions and the change will not address the root cause of the prison staffing crisis.

“If you’re looking purely at raw numbers, lowering the eligibility age might help add officers, but when you talk to veteran, experienced COs and they tell you what it’s like behind the walls, they aren’t describing conditions that you’d want to put teenagers into," Barclay said in a statement. "If we’re going to improve recruitment, morale and retention, we need systematic changes and policies that support the workforce we’re trying to bolster. Lowering the eligibility age doesn’t solve the root causes largely responsible for the staffing crisis we’re in."

DOCCS started a largescale digital recruitment campaign in February targeting community college campuses and military bases across upstate.

The department's Statewide Recruitment Unit operates recruitment centers in Destiny USA mall in Syracuse and Champlain Centre mall in Plattsburgh, and has launched regional recruitment efforts in Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Franklin, Dutchess, Chemung, Ulster and Clinton counties. 

The number of people taking the test to become a CO is up over 82% from the last fiscal year, and was up 58% in March versus January of this year, according to the department.

Three CO academy classes have graduated so far this year for a total of 177 new officers. Over 100 new recruits are in process of completing the academy, Martuscello said.

"Clearly, regional recruitment is working and needs to be expanded," the commissioner said April 8. "...And we are not taking our foot off the gas."