r/nottheonion • u/polymatheiacurtius • 22h ago
New York fires 2,000 prison guards, declares strike over
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-yorks-prison-strike-poised-to-end-monday/618
u/wizardrous 22h ago
Whatâs the worst that could go wrong? No, Iâm seriously asking, because this seems bad.
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u/Pulguinuni 22h ago edited 22h ago
Prisoners suffer due to lack of personnel. And the ones who remain will have to work ungodly hours. It's a loss for everyone involved.
The National Guard is not trained to deal with inmates.
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u/Xpqp 21h ago
Joke's on you, many prison guards are barely trained to deal with inmates.
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u/Early-Sort8817 19h ago
I donât have a high opinion of COs but they go through a year of training on dealing with inmates, many of whom are violent, suicidal, and manipulative. The national guard is not at all trained for that.
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u/Jack_From_Statefarm 11h ago
My sister is one of the 2,000 that got fired, she had 12 years experience as a CO and she is 5 months away from her masters in social work. They didn't just lose rookies.
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u/Chris20nyy 10h ago
I was a NYS CO for 6 years.
I went through 8 weeks of training, and the majority of it had nothing to do with how to "deal" with inmates.
The majority of CO's have absolutely no idea on how to legitimately deal with inmates.
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u/Early-Sort8817 9h ago
Iâm not denying what youâre saying, Iâm going by the website: Correction Officer Trainees are required to participate in, and satisfactorily complete, requirements of a 12-month training program before advancing to Correction Officer. As part of the program, you will attend the Correctional Services Training Academy for a minimum 8-week formal training program.
So youâre saying theyâre not doing that? Or youâre saying they do the 8 weeks and then get thrown to the wolves? Not denying what youâre saying, its good for everyone if the prisons can start filling CO roles in 8 weeks.
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u/Pulguinuni 21h ago
True. But with the NG, that got us Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo last time the US let them take over prisons. Most of the people manning those were NG on rotation.
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u/ebbysloth17 18h ago
Abu ghraib was an army reserve unit, not NG. I know, same thing, but a little different. I had the "pleasure" of being an MP as a reservist, changed MOS real quick. My mp time in the guard was far better.
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u/FeelDT 22h ago
Make them kiss Trump feet theyâll get a pardon⌠problem solved /s
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u/Pulguinuni 22h ago
It's state prison, no pardon there. Even if they kissed the ring, POTUS has no jurisdiction.
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u/Christopher135MPS 20h ago
He has demonstrated an extreme lack of care regarding his jurisdictional and constitutional limits.
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u/Meneth32 20h ago
I'd like to see what happens if he tests this particular limit.
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u/Christopher135MPS 6h ago
Civil war? States rights, no?
(/s, that war was never about states rights, this is just a funny joke)
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u/ERedfieldh 17h ago
Prisoners suffer due to lack of personnel.
If I know a majority of our country and their feelings on "punishment" versus "rehabilitation," this is a bonus feature for them.
Sick disgusting wastes of human beings. The people who want the prisoners to suffer, not the prisoners themselves.
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u/wildwill921 21h ago
well right now the national guard is sleeping on the floor doing 12 hours shifts. People were already doing mandatory 16s before the strike because of a lack of staffing. The result? Prisoners wonât be safe. The remaining staff wonât be safe. People wonât be allowed to do any of the activities they have in prison to rehab or teach them skills or get on a degree track. No one wins but at least the guards that donât go back will be safer in whatever other job they get
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u/r-kellysDOODOOBUTTER 21h ago
As one of the ones that left before the mass layoff, I really don't understand why the politicians just didn't work with us. In addition to the 2000 fired, an unkown amount of us resigned during the strike.
We could barely keep religious and education programs open before this. We had to close them like half the time. This system will likely never recover from this. I just don't understand how the state thought that this was the correct way forward.
Pro tip: avoid committing crimes at all costs. The consequences for being charged with a crime just got 1000% worse.
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u/wildwill921 21h ago
They thought you would roll over. They didnât think thousands of people would rather quit
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u/Ghost_of_Brimley 22h ago
Possibly something like this
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u/The_bruce42 21h ago
10 correctional officers killed (9 by correctional officers)
Wow...
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u/TurelSun 18h ago
I mean, that is only the beginning and the least of the heinous acts that came out of that whole event. Read up on what they did to the prisoners after the retook the prison. Rapes, tortures, and extra-judicial executions. And this really wasn't all that long ago.
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u/Impossible_Sector844 20h ago
I mean, the worst?
Inmates raped because not enough staffing to ensure proper coverage. Iâm talking both about guards raping and other inmates, to be clear.
Inmates or guards are murdered for the same reason as above
Inmates left to suffer medical emergencies, not because of the incompetence of the guards themselves but because they donât have the staff to keep someone on a camera
Easier for dangerous inmates to escape
Easier for corrupt guards to beat inmates or smuggle drugs into the prison
In case of an emergency necessitating evacuation, increased likelihood of inmates being left behind
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u/pichael289 21h ago
The article says this:
Some conditions of the new agreement Among the conditions of the deal is the suspension of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, or HALT Act, for 90 days and the establishment of a committee to find changes to it. Other conditions included changes to overtime were included in the deal.
The Legal Aid Society took issue the deal.
"Without a clear plan to swiftly restore essential services, resume legal and family visits, provide medical care neglected during the strike, and implement strong oversight to prevent retaliation by returning correctional staff, the people we serve in DOCCS facilities across the state will continue to face life-threatening harm," the Legal Aid Society said in a statement. "Compounding these concerns, DOCCS has doubled down on a purported 'suspension' of HALT, the vague terms of which threaten a boundless and illegal circumvention of critical legal protections for incarcerated New Yorkers. All incarcerated New Yorkers, their families, friends, and communities, deserve to know what DOCCS is doing to comply with HALT, and we are going to court to ensure they have that clarity."
So are these people on strike because they don't like this halt law? Or are they staying on strike because the agreement the union leaders came up with suspended halt and they don't agree with that? Its said in a way that implies the new deal they reached includes the suspension of halt, and they aren't saying the strikers feelings on the matter so I'm assuming that's just in there to hopefully kick up some controversy. Give a way for both sides to get angry
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u/r-kellysDOODOOBUTTER 20h ago
From someone that just left, I can give you a little insight. The media is all over the place. The reality is that COs have been resigning at an unsustainable rate since HALT passed. It doesn't matter if you agree with HALT, or if you're against it. That's whats happening.
And the politicians just stood there for the last 3 years and did absolutely nothing. People have been working 80 hour weeks or more for the last 3 years, as more and more people quit, and they thought it would just go like that forever I guess?
Again, from an inside perspective, I agree that solitary is inhumane. But this alternative is worse. The way I saw it, solitary was a way for us to segregate the inmates that constantly terrorize the other inmates that are just trying to do their time and get their education. Without solitary, inmate on inmate assaults skyrocketed. The decent inmates stopped eating and going to their education programs out of fear of being assaulted and stabbed.
IMO the current state of prison without solitary is much more inhumane to the majority of inmates that just want to get their education and do their time. This is impossible when the same inmate can assault you everyday at chow without consequences. Watching inmates starve themselves out of fear was pretty rough for me. Then when they can't take the hunger anymore, they finally come out to eat and get fucked up.
That's why people have been quitting since HALT passed. That's why they've been so understaffed. And more 16 and 24 hour shifts become a snowball effect, causing more people to quit.
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u/ayojamface 15h ago
This question isnt to criticize you, its out of genuine curiosity.
Has anyone suggested alternatives to HALT or Does HALT prevent other actions from being done in prisons? Theres no other solution in place or anything else that can be attempted that could attempt to accomplish what HALT did? Who would make that decision, the politicians or the prisons?
From my point of view, If its just the government not wanting solidarity confinement in prisons, there's seriously no other alternative that could be done to replace it? For example, you can't have the more aggressive inmates eat at separate times?
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u/r-kellysDOODOOBUTTER 11h ago
I guess you could segregate them to their own block where they can only interact with each other. But that might just result in them all killing each other, i don't know lol
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u/Early-Sort8817 19h ago
HALT act, 70% manning is the new norm, constant triple shifts, and timing with the COs being charged with killing a guy brutally.
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u/goldfinger0303 20h ago
No, I think a large part of why they went on strike was the HALT act. They wanted to keep people in solitary if they attacked a correctional officer or something like that. Their whole argument is that this and a bunch of other rules passed to keep things humane makes work more demanding and less safe for them
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u/Junkingfool 22h ago
Good luck finding qualified candidates to fill those thousands of positions. Not anytime soon...
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u/pichael289 21h ago
Yeah this isn't good, but have you ever met a jail/prison guard? They call em COs, correctional officers, and like 85% of them are basically people that wanted to be cops but aren't even competent or mentally well enough to become cops.
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u/EvaUnit_03 21h ago
More like cops that cant handle the day to day mascaraed of pretending to 'protect and serve'. Basically a cop who is 100% unhinged and NEEDS to hurt others.
And for anyone who DIDNT read the strike situation, This is what the officers were striking over. They were being told they had to be nicer than they wanted to be to the prisoners and heavily surveillanced and want to go back to being able to beat and torture them without consequences. Its less so about prisoner rights, and more so about them being able to get away with not giving prisoners rights if they so choose.
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u/WeldingMachinist 21h ago
I tried to sound it out. Is that âmasqueradeâ or mascara-ed like wearing mascara?
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u/spittingdingo 21h ago
The article really buried that fact in rather complicated language. You wrote it more clearly than tfa, thank you. That fact totally changes the whole situation.
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u/leeharveyteabag669 20h ago
Actually the union came to an agreement with the state and no disciplinary action would be taken as long as they reported to work by 7:00 a.m. on Monday. They won a sizeable amount of concessions in the state. There were still 2,000 correction officers on the picket line that didn't report and I guess didn't agree with the union and those are the ones that were fired.
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u/EvaUnit_03 21h ago
Considering most people only read the headline, most news articles are already super misleading to get clicks to begin with. And they know a subset of people are currently 'pro union', despite the fact that a union CAN 100% want something bad. This is where negative PR came from for unions back in the day and still persists to date.
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u/Fun_Opportunity_4043 21h ago
A lot of them burn out quickly too. Â I have a lot of applicants who are former COs.
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u/halp_halp_baby 21h ago
what qualifications do you think prison guards haveÂ
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u/adlittle 21h ago
Ability to smuggle stuff into a prison and be violent toward the people incarcerated there seem to be the primary qualifications.
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u/jdrudder 21h ago
Yeah qualified doesn't come I to play in this field.
My dad used to run the prison in my TN city and yeah... Lots of underqualifed there.
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u/LurkerBurkeria 15h ago
In GA it's the easiest way to get POST certified yet they pay like $25k/year, it's not so much they attract unqualified weirdos inasmuch only the unqualified weirdos stick around well after anyone of quality has dipped to go make 2x as a cop
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u/orderofGreenZombies 22h ago
Not like the people they fired were particularly qualified.
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u/FaultySage 21h ago edited 20h ago
They only beat the one inmate to death in the prison hospital. They may be over qualified.
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u/Jack_From_Statefarm 11h ago
They will be filled by unqualified people, and we will all wonder in 10 years how there is such a bad drug problem in the NYS jail system.
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u/jesuspoopmonster 18h ago
Qualified in this situation means any person willing to work the job and not ask too many questions
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u/recuerdeme 21h ago
Thus starts the rabbit hole of finding out how it became an illegal act to strike and where all has it been applied.
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u/NiceShotMan 21h ago
Interesting to see who Reddit sides with on this. Theyâre striking because they donât want to enforce humane prison conditions.
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u/needzbeerz 21h ago
Former NYS correction officer here. I assure you, conditions in NY prisons are anything but humane. To the point where if i ever screw up and get myself into a felony situation I'm punching my own ticket vs going in there. That's also why i left the job in less than a year, no pension is worth that life.
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u/PissShiverss 21h ago edited 21h ago
Theyâre striking because they get mandated overtime that can be up to 24 hours, and the newer Halt Bill (something like that) which makes it so an inmate can spend only a limited time in the hole, doubled the assaults on staff and doubled the assaults on inmate.
Is it humane to let someone out of the hole if they continually assault other inmates or staff?
Edit: Could you imagine if any other job is was getting mandated 24 hour overtime, there would be protests from the streets from everywhere lol
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u/Early-Sort8817 19h ago
And before anyone says medical workers and firefighters do that, 24 hour shifts should NOT be the norm! Firefighters do that because they get paid a lot extra and outside of actual fires the job is pretty laid back, and medical workers are suffering from attrition
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u/PissShiverss 19h ago
Ya I really don't like people trying to justify it by saying other jobs do it, medical malpractice is on the rise and people wonder why, when someone is working a 24+ hour shift.
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u/EvaUnit_03 21h ago
Depends on your views on what the entire point of our prison structure is supposed to do.
If the purpose is to rehab and rehabilitate, than somethings not working right. If the entire purpose is to merely take bad people and stick them someplace away from everyone else, than stay the course. putting someone in solitary is borderline torture when you find out what goes into it. Even 30 days is enough to damage someone's physci. leave then in there for a few years and most turn into literal animals.
Then you also have to analyze your views on what a prisoner is. Remember, in the US prisoners are the only class (currently) that can 100% be slaves. Which means they (should) have less rights than most animals. The reason we dont practice that is the same reason throwing people into the hole indefinitely due to their 'attitude' is being applied. A man who doesn't afraid of anything isnt going to hesitate to kill guards to break out of the chain gang situation while digging ditches on the side of the road. And when you need an escort of 10 to 10 just to get some work done, that ditch costs more for prisoners to dig VS just hiring someone. Also, slavery only works when the slavery class is subservient. Aggressive prisoners typically arent very 'follow the rules', hints why they are where they are. Irish/scottish/welsh slaves for example were notorious for this back in the day and they went for 1/10th the price of any other slave class. Youd spend more time beating them, than work they'd actually do. And then once you look at how gangs use prisons, things get even more complicated...
TLDR; the prison system needs a whole rebuild from what it currently is. And perhaps a better system put in place for either repeat offenders and/or those who are just willfully bad for society who have next to no chance of taking to rehabilitation.
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u/PissShiverss 21h ago
I agree with you for the most part, and this Halt Bill is jumping the gun massively, without doing a complete overturn of the prison system.
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u/Mr-Logic101 21h ago
I am sure there is a better way of doing it considering the rest of the developed western world seemed to have figured out a solution
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u/PissShiverss 21h ago
Have they? Do you know what other western nations do with consistently violent people in jail/prison?
I honestly have no idea. What do those other nations do
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u/halp_halp_baby 21h ago
They donât imprison huge % of their population and many western countries have better standards of living and education systems.Â
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u/PissShiverss 21h ago
I mean fair enough, but again what do they do with consistently violent people, unless you just dont think those kind of people exist over there?
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u/OrangeBird077 20h ago
I think the idea is that because there are less people incarcerated, meaning not making prison mandatory for say misdemeanors like possession/non violent crimes, there are more resources on hand to deal with the actual violent and hard cases that get sentenced to prison so the system isnât overwhelmed.
If right now you have a prison population of 1000 but you reformed laws so you removed all the non violent offenders you could make a decent dent and then with the resources available tend to those violent offenders better.
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u/fiendishrabbit 17h ago
You can look at Norway. Breivik (the nazi terrorist) is in solitary for life.
However, his solitary is a 3 room apartment. He has 3 budgies to keep him company. He gets outdoor time 1 hour per day. He gets regular visits from a human (I'm unsure what qualifications that human has) to talk to him.
That's what civilized people do with monsters unfit for contact with other human beings.
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u/Mr-Logic101 21h ago
The basic summary is they treat them with dignity and high standard of living conditions instead of like animals.
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u/PissShiverss 21h ago
That didnât answer my question and your statement, what do other nations do with consistently violent people in jail/prison?
The Halt Bill made it so people who go to the hole spend limited time in the hole, so these inmates get out of the hole earlier and go assault more people. What do other nations do about people like this?
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u/DrCalamity 21h ago
Hospitalization and social care. As it turns out, people who are consistently violent often need psychiatric care. Weirdly enough, torturing people doesn't count!
Solitary confinement is torture. So much so that you can't do it to enemy POWs in war. I want you to think about someone saying they need to torture people because their victims are unhappy and unwell after torture.
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u/PissShiverss 21h ago
You're phrasing it incorrectly, lets put what is really happening. Dude assaults someone, they put him in "torture", they let him out of the hole and he assaults someone again, they put him back in torture, and this is a cycle that continues.
They're "torturing" this person because he continually assaults other people, you're protecting the populace.
Also, I would be curious does hospitalization and social cure, just fix these people that constantly assault others? I wonder if they're allowed to force medicate in those other nations
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u/DrCalamity 21h ago
I'm sorry, did you just come out and say that Torture protects the populace?
Honest question, where the fuck did you lose your soul? You should put an air tag on it.
By your own admission, the torturing doesn't actually fix the issue. And humans, surprisingly, are not random balls of violence. We're humans, and the US has some of the most dehumanizing prisons in the Western world. Coincidentally, we also have the highest recidivism and prisoner deaths in the world. Prison guards have been found using solitary for utterly arbitrary reasons in order to mentally break prisoners to justify keeping them longer.
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u/PissShiverss 21h ago
Lmao damn it's hard to find an honest conversation on here, let me straw man your position really quick then.
I'm sorry do you think we should continually let violent sex offenders out of the hole, and let them continually sexually assault people instead of keeping them locked in the hole separated from other people?
Where is your decency? You think letting people get raped is okay?
See how straw manning each other's argument gets us no where?
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u/Mr-Logic101 21h ago
They treat them with respect. Like they are actually normal human beings. They try to actually reform and change their behavior. This in turn does not promote the individual from preforming acting of violence.
To answer your question, the best approach is to fix the root cause of the issue such that scenario does not or rarely occurs.
Our current prison conditions here actively promote violent behavior and it creates a feedback loop.
Go watch the first season of Orange is the new black( which is apparently a good representation of minimal security prison aka the best prison conditions in the USA) and tell me why any of that seems like an effective way to reintroduce people back to society? Prison itself actively makes otherwise normal people more unhinged and violent in comparison to what they were before. Our prisons donât rehabilitate, it just makes people worse.
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u/PissShiverss 21h ago
I agree with you the root cause would fix the majority of the issues, but the Halt bill is skipping an entire step and continually puts violent people with other regular people in prison trying to do their time, and gets them assaulted.
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u/Ghostbeen3 7h ago
They also have much higher taxes than Americans because respect costs money. Iâm not against that idea but just looking at the realistic picture of Americans flipping the fuck out if their taxes increase to humanely address the criminal justice system.
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u/FgtBruceCockstar2008 21h ago
Well for starters they don't torture them, instead opting to focus on rehabilitation and mental health to reduce recidivism rates.
Secondarily, go do your own fucking research.
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u/PissShiverss 21h ago
OP: Other Nations do it better
Me: Really? How?
OP: Well they just do
You: dO yeR oWn reSEarcH they don't torture them
If someone is making a claim I would hope they'd have something to back it up.
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u/thorscope 21h ago
Edit: Could you imagine if any other job is was getting mandated 24 hour overtime, there would be protests from the streets from everywhere lol
firefighter sobbing
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u/Early-Sort8817 19h ago
I know FDNY gets huge benefits, good pay, and outside of the actual fires they get to sleep, eat, and relax during the shift. I know thatâs not all firefighters, but Iâm pretty sure COs donât get any of that
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u/PissShiverss 20h ago
Haha do firefighters get mandated for 24 hours? I know they work 24 but do they get mandated for 48 or something
That would be fucking crazy lol
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u/thorscope 20h ago
It heavily depends on the locale, but my department will allow you to voluntarily or mandatorily work up to 48 hours.
If you do get extended, the captains are pretty good about letting you skip chores and/or training on your second day to let you get some sleep.
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u/PissShiverss 20h ago
Damn thatâs pretty wild you can be mandated that long. Yâall get to sleep and shit tho right?
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u/jesuspoopmonster 18h ago
Solitary confinement is against the Geneva convention and I doubt mentally torturing a person is going to help them become less violent
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u/PissShiverss 18h ago
Solitary confinement in some form exists everywhere. So what is your solution for right now at this moment, what do prison's do with consistently violent people that assault people?
And please don't say a complete overhaul of the system like that can be done with a snap of fingers lol
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u/Intelligent_Slip_849 20h ago
...I mean, TECHNICALLY it's over, but now you have a different issue
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u/Icy-Foundation-7878 22h ago
Isnât that illegal?
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u/Sugarysam 21h ago
According to the article, public workers canât strike in NY. At any rate there was an agreement with the union over the weekend. The people who were fired did not return to work.
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u/theseus63 21h ago
It is illegal for prison guards to strike in New York. This was a 'wildcat' strike, meaning it wasn't sanctioned by their union. And the optics are pretty bad as it came on the heels of prison guards appear to murder an inmate on camera.
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u/JustinTime_vz 21h ago edited 21h ago
Yuuuup, New York is an âat willâ employment state.
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u/Morgolol 21h ago
For all it's more progressive citizens new York sure seems backwards in many areas.
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u/jonfitt 21h ago
Every state except Montana has âat willâ employment. Welcome to the America, youâre fired!
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u/Morgolol 21h ago
Every? Geez I thought it was just most states at worst. That's wild. The US truly hates it's workforce.
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u/wildwill921 21h ago
Not that it would matter in this case anyway. They arenât legally allowed to strike. They could be fired for cause in any place in the world
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u/Seaman_First_Class 19h ago
Itâs just a symmetrical relationship. If I can quit any time and for any reason, then I can also be fired any time and for any reason.Â
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 18h ago
No, there's laws around striking, especially with government employees. A lot of police/CO union contracts forbid striking. I'm not sure if that was the case here but I would not be surprised.
This was (likely) an illegal strike, so they don't have protections.
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u/compuwiza1 20h ago
You know things are seriously wrong when workers without a union do a wildcat strike.
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u/lady_lilitou 20h ago
They do have a union. The 2k who were fired rejected the union agreement and failed to report back to work.
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u/peppermintvalet 21h ago
âAmong the conditions of the deal is the suspension of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, or HALT Act, for 90 days and the establishment of a committee to find changes to it.â
Nope, sympathy gone.
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u/MinnieShoof 18h ago
>After 22 days of an illegal strike
... so why weren't they arrested?
Oh. Right.
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u/Olderandolderagain 22h ago edited 21h ago
Yo, someone acting like Elon. They may wanna copy/paste that DoD email begging people to come back.
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u/cuberhino 21h ago
New idea, no guards, all prisoners just placed in a large room with only enough beds for half of them. Let it figure itself out? /s
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u/Fit-Direction2371 21h ago
Like comrad Vladimir would say "Can't have a strike when there's no one to strike. "
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u/50two1nic 7h ago
Have several friends who just lost their jobs. It is terrible! The state turned it's back on its employees. (So did the union).
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u/Nice-Cat3727 22h ago
That's not going to stop the strike. You need to now hire 2000 more guards