Men imprisoned at Woodbourne Correctional Facility said they had been denied hot meals and confined to their cells.
This was supposed to be Michael Vasquez’s last month in prison. But since officers walked out of the Woodbourne Correctional Facility this week, Vasquez is worried that after seven years behind bars, he won’t be released as scheduled.
“It makes me angry, but at the same time it makes me fearful,” Vasquez told Gothamist in a phone interview on Friday, hours after phone access was restored to people incarcerated at Woodbourne. “Because if they're gonna hold me here, what is not to say if one day they say, ‘No we're not letting you go, you gotta wait until this whole thing is over.’”, which is about 100 miles north of Manhattan in Sullivan County. Under New York’s Taylor Law, state employees are not allowed to strike, rendering the actions illegal. The officers began the wildcat strike over objections to rising rates of violence, routine understaffing and a state law that is meant to restrict the use of solitary confinement. The walkouts are also occurring as the statewide prison system faces increased public scrutiny in the wake of the death of Robert Brooks, whom staff at the Marcy Correctional Facility fatally beat in December Vasquez and Christian Palencia, another man incarcerated at Woodbourne, said their facility was on lockdown for 72 hours, leaving prisoners confined to their cells and unable to eat hot meals or buy goods at the commissary. The only foods served in the middle of the week were cereal, bread and bologna.across the state’s network of 42 prisons. Guard troops are now visible in the prison, but they aren’t interacting with prisoners, the men said. “It's stressful because you don't know – anything could change,” Palencia said. When prison officials restored access to phones on Friday, he called a friend who connected the call to Gothamist. A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which oversees the state’s prison and parole system, didn’t respond to questions about the men’s description of conditions at Woodbourne.As incarcerated people report deteriorating conditions because of the walkouts, the guards protesting outside have voiced several grievances of their own. In, many of the strikers blamed the problems on the 2021 HALT Solitary law, which limits the amount of time a person can be held in solitary confinement and requires due process before a commitment can begin. It also mandates that any incarcerated individual be allowed at least four hours out of their cells each day and bars staff from putting pregnant and disabled prisoners in solitary confinement. Corrections officers and their supporters argue that the law makes it harder for them to maintain discipline and segregate violent people from the general population. Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay, a Republican, said the wildcat strike “was really from COs just being so frustrated with the situation and having it gone on for so long that I think they felt there's no other alternatives.” Barclay, who visited striking officers in Auburn on Thursday, added that “safety in the facilities – that's their main driver, and they point fingers at the HALT Act.” The measure’s supporters, however, argue that solitary confinement is akin to torture, and that restrictions on it are necessary to shield incarcerated people from excessive cruelty in the system. Before the law’s passage, prisoners could be confined to a cell for up to 23 hours a day.“ What rights are we going to suspend next?” said Jerome Wright, a previously incarcerated man and now co-director of the HALT Solitary Campaign, who blamed Hochul for allowing the directive. “That's not democracy. That's not even leadership. That's bulls–t.” It didn’t satisfy many corrections officers either, Barclay said. Demonstrations continued around the state on Friday.There were 1,938 reported prisoner assaults on staff in the first 11 months of 2024, a roughly 65% increase compared to 2021. Reported assaults among the incarcerated population increased from 1,108 in 2021 to 2,697 in the first 11 months of 2024. About 33,000 people are incarcerated in the state’s prisons. The number of people in special housing units – the technical term for solitary confinement – has declined since HALT took effect in March 2022. There were 238 people in SHUs as of Feb. 1 of this year,But Wright said the provisions of HALT haven’t been fully implemented, and abuse remains common across the prison system. He argued the walkouts are a distraction from the indictments handed up this week in the Brooks case.governing the state prison system. Progressive legislators and groups that advocate for incarcerated people have called for more independent oversight and the closure of the Marcy facility. James Miller, the spokesperson for the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents many prison staff, said the actions of the staff at Marcy –The union has said it did not coordinate the unlawful demonstrations across state prisons. Hochul brought in labor mediator Martin Scheinman to broker a resolution. He said in a Friday statement that talks will begin Monday. Vasquez, who is serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence for aggravated assault of a police officer stemming from a 2018 altercation at a grocery store in Harlem, was previously incarcerated at Marcy. He said in an interview that guards there would regularly rough up prisoners, including himself. Vasquez called the current walkout a distraction by officers who don’t want greater oversight.Jimmy Vielkind covers how state government and politics affect people throughout New York. He has covered Albany since 2008, most recently as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Jimmy led a team of reporters that won a New York Press Club award for coverage of Andrew Cuomo’s downfall and was on a team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for coverage of Amazon’s HQ2 process. A native of the Capitol Region, Jimmy has two degrees in urban planning. His position is funded by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Reach Jimmy atSick of the frigid cold in NYC? Forecast calls for warm-up this weekend, early next weekBrittany KriegsteinGothamist is a website about New York City news, arts, events and food, brought to you by New York Public Radio.
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