The state budget provided funding for the state department of corrects and community supervision to close up to five prisons across New York state as prisons mitigate the realities of decreasing prison population and worsening conditions.

Recently, the state department announced the closure of two upstate prisons this fall.

To learn more about the impact of that decision, we sat down with state Senator Julia Salazar, who chairs the Senate community on crime victims, crime, and correction.

Here's that conversation.

[ THEME MUSIC ] Thank you so much for joining us today, Senator.

Great to see you.

Thanks for having me.

Of course.

Now the state budget authorized the state department of corrections and community supervision to look at closing up to five prisons in New York state.

So can you help us understand why the legislature thought it was important for the department to have that authority?

Absolutely.

So-- for context, in the executive budget this year, the Governor included in her executive budget, the ability for her to authorize the closure of up to five prisons over the course of the next year.

So at this point, between now and April.

And it had been the Governor's public plan and DOC's public plan to do this and this past April, we collectively included this in the enacted budget, and for myself and others in the legislature, we-- we have, I think, multiple opinions about why it's important to close facilities.

I do agree with the rationale from DOC and executive that our prisons are currently struggling with recruiting enough staff, both correction staff and correction officers but also program staff, medical personnel.

That's a really serious issue that there are not enough doctors, nurses, psychologists to provide care in DOC's facilities and additionally, some of these facilities like great meadow have been operating with a really low population.

So this is sort of a way of right-sizing correctional facilities and then additionally to speak for myself, I think that when it is responsible to do so, we should be looking at closing prisons and prisons shouldn't be essentially a jobs program.

The catch, though, is that we have to do so responsibly, mitigate the impact on local communities and have a plan for transition when prisons are closed because of the significant impact it can have on so many people.

And as you mentioned, it was announced recently that later this fall two upstate prisons, the great meadow correctional facility and the Sullivan correctional facilities will be closing.

So I wanted to understand more about your perspective on that decision to close the those two prisons upstate.

Yes.

So this decision was entirely made by the Governor and DOCS in terms of what facilities are closing.

Even though I personally, as the chair of the committee, I support their decision regarding great meadow and Sullivan.

Great meadow, it's a facility that I visited within the last year and a half, and it's a facility that has had a lot of issues.

A very high rate of reported violence, both against incarcerated individuals, by correction staff and also against corrections staff.

A lot of reports of abuse, but additionally, we know that the facility even as of early this year, before closures were announced, was only 27% full in terms of their capacity and population.

That is the lowest of any DOCS facility by far, and there have been a ton of vacancies at the facility, which, you know, it poses a humanitarian crisis in some cases when almost a third of the health services positions are vacant and people can't get urgent medical care, and similar challenges at Sullivan.

Sullivan is a smaller facility, medium security facility, but they have struggled with even greater gaps in filling their health services position.

So the health care has really been deeply inadequate at Sullivan as well.

It's a common-- common problem among facilities, but particularly acute with Sullivan and great meadow.

There's also been pushback on the decision from unions representing state correction officers.

They argue that it may put officers at risk and there needs to be more of a long-term solution to address the conditions at state prisons of the so I was just curious if you had any response to those specific concerns from those unions.

I sympathize with the concerns.

There absolutely should be a comprehensive plan.

Not only for these two closures but for any future, additional closures of prisons, which I think if we are actually meeting our public safety goals and policy-- public safety policy is effective that we will see more closures of state prisons, and so we have to be prepared with a plan every time that is specific to the facility, to the local population, the locality that will be impacted by the closure, to their economic needs.

The impact-- and also the impact on families and workers, of course, as well as the incarcerated population.

And so what I would like to see and eager to work on and beginning to work on is a sort of comprehensive just transition for corrections.

So a way of deliberately changing and improving how the state addresses closures.

The state does have and has had a prison redevelopment commission which convened by Governor Hochul a few years ago, a couple years ago after a series of six closures, to look at the-- previous closures, including those ones, and its impact on communities and how the state can basically execute these closures more effectively and even -- I think there's an opportunity for the closure of prisons to have the need to have benefits for community and have a positive impact, but that is only going to happen if we are intentional and deliberate about it and bring in the stakeholders.

People who are directly impacted by these closures, listen to them and implement their recommendations.

And what would you say to New Yorkers who may be worried or concerned about the closure of these prisons and conditions of prisons across the state?

I know you mentioned the possibility of a positive impact.

What might that look like?

Yeah.

One positive impact that I look forward to when I visit prisons across the state, I see that it's not unique unfortunately to Sullivan and great meadow that they're always understaffed.

Particularly program staff, medical staff, other support staff and certainly correction officers, the department has struggled with recruitment and retention and that is something that these closures, I expect will address.

When, you know, the impact that the staff shortages is profound.

It is an impact that is felt by staff in facilities, that they are stretched too thin, that they're having to work overtime and just generally in every way makes their jobs harder when there aren't enough staff in general and it certainly has an impact, I think a negative impact on trying to address violence in facilities when we don't have adequate staff operating programs that seek to address harmful or violent behavior.

We-- it also presents challenges for DOCS complying with the law in terms of how facilities are operated and mandates in facilities.

So I really anticipate a positive impact from these closures on conditions in facilities, on violence in facilities, and also on the wellbeing of both, generally speaking, staff and incarcerated individuals who will have more support that they really need.

And lastly, as chair of the state Senate committee on crime victims, crime and correction, I'm curious if there were any ways that you were looking to continue to tackle the upkeep of state prisons?

You know, looking into the next Legislative Session in the few months ahead.

Absolutely.

I have introduced legislation that we have referred to as a rights behind bars bill, a comprehensive bill seeking to address issues in facilities, conditions particularly, rights that are not really being respected and tried to improve conditions both for incarcerated individuals and for staff.

There has been a lot of discussion about the lack of air conditioning in facilities, for example and this has to do with the age of most of these buildings and how cost prohibitive it is without dedicated funding for DOCS to upgrade their infrastructure and to incorporate air conditioning into facilities.

The inspector general just released a report regarding health compliance, which is to say that many facilities, DOCS across the state are not complying with the solitary confinement act and they should be.

We want to make sure that facilities are complying with the law and the law is as clear as possible for the sake of people's human rights and not causing individuals to deteriorate while they are incarcerated.

As we know solitary confinement can do.

There really is so much work for us to do-- ahead of us to try to reform the system of incarceration in New York state and including the fact that there is essentially prison slavery in our state.

Earlier this year, myself and Senator Skoufis and Senator Myrie co-chaired a legislative hearing on the DOCS system for employing incarcerated individuals, paying them extremely low wages, less than a dollar per hour in order to do work that is-- is often very exploitative certainly, but also not really meaningful or enriching to the individual, not giving them skills to be able to use after incarceration and so we really want to examine that work on legislation to change that, so that we're not seeing de facto slavery persist in New York's prison system as well.

Well, certainly a lot to look forward to.

It sounds like there's a lot of work ahead.

Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for now.

Thank you.

It's really been a pleasure.

Thank you.

And we were speaking with state Senator Julia Salazar, chair of the state Senate committee on crime victims, crime, and correction.

[ THEME MUSIC ] and for more information on the future of prisons in New York state, you can visit our website.

Again, that's at NYnow.org.