Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks in Glen Cove on July 16. (Photo courtesy of Don Pollard/Office of Gov. Kathy Hochul)

ALBANY — As New York continues to lose correctional officers, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she is considering making some changes to the pay scale and age requirements associated with the job in a bid to get more people into vacant positions.

The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision plans to close two facilities this year: Great Meadow Correctional in Washington County and Sullivan Correctional Facility in Sullivan County. DOCCS Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello III cited staffing challenges as a major driver of the decision to close those two facilities in his letter to department staff announcing the closures.

The two prisons had 182 and 76 vacant correctional officer positions at the time that announcement was made earlier this month. Across the entire system, there are about 2,000 vacant correctional officer positions, according to DOCCS.

Taking questions on Tuesday morning, Hochul said the decision to close prisons this year was also driven by a long-term drop in the incarcerated population.

From the 1990s peak of more than 70,000 people incarcerated in the state prisons, there are roughly 33,000 as of July 1.

“From a government policy perspective, it makes sense to, often, right-size institutions within our control, and prisons are a part of it,” Hochul said. “There was a time there was a building spree of prisons because more people were being incarcerated. Now fewer people are being incarcerated.”

Hochul acknowledged that there’s been less success recruiting people for state law enforcement jobs in recent years, both for state police and correctional officers.

“We have seen a decline in the number of recruits,” she said.

To address that, Hochul said she is weighing some rule changes for who can be recruited to be a correctional officer, namely raising the eligible age a person can apply to become a correctional officer. Under current state regulations, an applicant must be at least 20 but no older than 36 to apply to work as a correctional officer.

“With respect to corrections officers, I’m going to look at what the required maximum age is now to do this,” she said.

Last year, Hochul pushed to expand the state police ranks by increasing the maximum age for new recruits from 29 to 34.

She also grew the number of training academy programs offered each year from one to four.

James Miller, spokesperson for the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, said raising the maximum age would be “a step in the right direction,” but said the union is worried that the impacts of closing facilities will do more damage to officer headcounts than that move alone could reverse.

“Closing facilities compounds the problem of retaining officers,” Miller said. “When officers have to move, especially veteran officers who may be eligible to retire, but weren’t necessarily ready to, but now don’t want to uproot their families, that certainly hurts.”

He said recruiting problems have become a nationwide issue, but there are a few ways that state policies could shift to reverse impacts in New York. Miller said the union has recorded 1,600 officers leaving the force in New York in the last year.

“I think that at least increasing pay, improving the safety in facilities, reducing the violence in the facilities, making more candidates able to take the exam and enter the academy is a step in the right direction,” he said.

Miller expressed some concerns about the move to close facilities and potentially lose more correctional officers in the shuffle, and said there have been 2,100 more people put into New York prisons this year.

“The number of inmates now outnumbers the number of officers we have lost,” he said.

In his letter announcing the most recent raft of facility closures, Martuscello said that if recruitment trends don’t pick up, the agency may start considering further closures before the end of the fiscal year. DOCCS and the governor’s office have the power to close up to three more facilities with 90 days of notice within the remaining fiscal year, which will end April 1.