Republican Candidate for governor of New York Bruce Blakeman said Tuesday that if elected, he will work with state lawmakers to “end” the HALT Solitary confinement law.
But Blakeman acknowledged that if Democrats maintain their overwhelming majorities in the legislature as conventional wisdom would suggest, his best option would likely be negotiating changes to state law through a give and take with legislative leaders.
It’s a path his opponent, Gov. Kathy Hochul, has used extensively in recent years to wear down state lawmakers to accept policy change she supports during the budget process, though she faces a legislature of her own party and established working relationships with legislative leaders.
The union representing New York’s correction officers is endorsing Republican Bruce Blakeman for governor, bringing the state’s ongoing prison staffing and safety crisis into the gubernatorial campaign.
The New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association formally announced its endorsement alongside Blakeman at the state Capitol Tuesday after a vote last week.
It comes more than a year after a three-week illegal correction officer strike in the winter of last year, after which Gov. Kathy Hochul fired 2,000 correction officers who refused to return to work. The state bolstered staffing in the aftermath with National Guard troops, nearly 3,000 of whom remain in those positions today. Blakeman said he would work to hire those officers back. The state has brought some back on through a grievance process that began last year.
“Our prisons are much less safe under the HALT Act,” Blakeman said. The law limits the use of solitary confinement in state prisons and instead puts and emphasis on rehabilitative programming, but aspects of it were suspended in the aftermath of the strike and it continues to be a flashpoint.
Blakeman appeared with correction officers who say they have experienced firsthand violence in state facilities they blame on New York’s limits on the use of solitary confinement under the law.
“I got home seeing the look on my children’s faces, my eyes swollen shut and beat up is a feeling I never want to feel again,” correction officer Wade Carey said.
State prisons remain in the midst of a staffing crisis after the strike, which also went around NYSCOPBA and raised questions about its effectiveness as a union.
One of the key demands during the strike was a repeal of HALT. Tuesday, Blakeman made a pledge:
“Day one as the governor of this state, we will work with our great legislators who are here today of this state to immediately end the HALT Act,” Blakeman said.
But all of those state lawmakers standing behind him Tuesday are currently members of the minority in both houses of the Legislature. The overwhelmingly Democrat-led Legislature has expressed almost no appetite for revisiting the law either before or during the days since the strike.
When asked how he would accomplish a repeal considering the likelihood he would face a Democrat-led Legislature if elected, Blakeman pointed to the power of the governor’s office.
“The governor holds a tremendous amount of power and I will use that leverage to make our prisons safer and protect our correction officers,” Blakeman said.
When pressed, Blakeman also acknowledged a more complicated reality, saying assuming Democrats maintain legislative power, he would seek changes through negotiations.
“There is a lot of things that the Democrats may want that I may disagree with, but it’s a negotiation process and a bargaining process and at the top of my list is making our state safer, so that will be at the top of my list and it will be a negotiation,” Blakeman said, arguing that statistics around prison violence point to the HALT act being a “complete failure.”
Negotiating policy changes that likely otherwise would be a nonstarter with state lawmakers through the budget process is a strategy Hochul has made extensive use of herself in part to roll back recent criminal justice reforms she argued went to far, and Hochul was largely forced to work within the constraints of actions that didn’t require legislative approval to end the correction officer strike.
Hochul’s campaign responded to the NYSCOPBA endorsement in a statement to Spectrum News 1.
“We’ll put Governor Hochul’s law enforcement record up against Bruce Blakeman’s any day. She’s invested nearly $4 billion in public safety and helped drive gun violence to record lows, and when correction officers broke the law, abandoned their posts and put their colleagues and surrounding communities at risk, Governor Hochul acted to restore order and hold them accountable,” Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said.
With the state reaching a settlement in the Robert Brooks case, state prisons also remain in the news this week, placing the state’s Department of Corrections on the defensive.
“The Department continues to take significant steps to reduce violence and improve facility safety, including deploying body-worn cameras at all facilities, expanding fixed-camera coverage, implementing body-image scanners and enhanced package and mail screening, and strengthening investigative resources. DOCCS has zero tolerance for violence and holds individuals accountable for misconduct through disciplinary and, when appropriate, criminal procedures,” the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said in a statement.