Tom Eschen
March 10, 2025
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Albany — "You may be familiar with the quote often attributed to Dostoevsky, that you can judge the quality of a society by the conditions of its prisons. And if that's the case, then we are epically failing, not just in New York State, but across the country. And it should not be a partisan issue how we treat the most vulnerable members of our society, many of whom are behind bars," NYS Inspector General Lucy Lang says.
Lang says she's visited all of New York State's Correctional Facilities, most recently issuing an August 2024 report reviewing the implementation of the HALT Act.
The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act was signed by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo in April 2021, becoming effective March 31, 2022.
The August 2024 report was triggered by multiple complaints to the IG office by incarcerated people, their loved ones and advocates, saying DOCCS violated HALT provisions.
Of the findings from the report, the IG points to recordkeeping practices as one of the most impactful, saying it hinders oversight of HALT compliance.
"We found that it was very difficult to know whether the bill was being administered as it was intended, and that was in large part because of the outdated tracking systems that are being used in the state prisons," she said.
"So amongst the things that HALT requires are that people who are in segregated housing units are given opportunities to be out of their cell for at least four hours a day. And it was difficult to judge based on paper log books whether that was being done at scale. I personally have gone into many of these segregated housing units and the rehabilitative units that have been used in large part to try to replace them, and have personally signed into log books using pen and paper. There have to be more updated ways of tracking who is going in and out, and who is being offered opportunities to get their programming as required, to get their educational access and to get their out of cell and outdoor time."
With that, the IG report says that DOCCS lacked HALT-mandated justification for holding people in segregated confinement. It also states DOCCS wasn't able to readily identify misbehavior that led to confinement, or if people were offered appropriate out-of-cell time.
The report also states that DOCCS restrained people while out-of-cell without HALT-mandated individual assessments.
"It's going to take all hands on deck to approach the problems with the lack of technological infrastructure across the department, and that's going to include input, of course, from the people who are administrating the system on the inside and from incarcerated people who are subject to it, as well as a will from legislators and from the public to make an investment in making the conditions more humane," she says.
While the IG pushes for more of an investment, others, like the workers who went on the illegal strike these past few weeks, have pushed for a full repeal of the HALT.
“The non-sanction strike that occurred didn’t begin on February 17 as a result of one single incident. It is a combination of frustration that built among members since the whole act began in April 2022,” said Jimmy Miller, a spokesperson for NYSCOPBA. “As a result of HALT, violence that climbed to reach epidemic levels that exists today as frustration grew among our members we have communicated to the governor’s office on a number of occasions and relate to them that officers were at a breaking point and crying out for help.”
Others though, say HALT needs to be fully implemented to make conditions better for everyone, both workers and inmates. The IG says investment is needed for that to happen, while some advocates say the will the implement the HALT Act hasn't been there.
"In 2022 I happened to be there at the end of my incarceration when HALT was being implemented," Thomas Gant, from the Center for Community Alternatives, says. ""And the problem has started from its inception. It was never implemented properly. And there was a lot, always, a lot of pushback from correction staff and even leadership, unfortunately. And so, the narrative that people in prison are running around, you know, doing whatever you want to do and don't have the threat of, you know, consequence, is so not true. There's still other tools and other mechanisms that staff can use if a person still does some very dastardly things. So that's unfortunate, and because of the pushback and the resistance to change, right? This is why we have the problem that we have right now. So, the life-threatening situations that we have going on prisons right now, mainly is because a few bad actors, are the ones who are initiating these unstable environments."
CBS6 asked Inspector General Lang: "Was there any hesitancy that you had found that they just didn't want to do it, or they just didn't comply?"
"There were structural impediments, including the facilities and limitations that all of the folks who are administering the system were subject to," IG Lang responded.
