Mounds of ash from burn barrels sit in front of Adirondack Correctional on Wednesday after the corrections officer strike ended on Monday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

RAY BROOK — The strike is over. After three weeks of a statewide illegal wildcat strike, corrections officers at state prisons — including Adirondack Correctional — either returned to work on Monday with a small handful of their demands met, resigned or were fired.

An anonymous source who did not want to be named for fear of retribution told the Enterprise that approximately 25 officers at Adirondack Correctional lost their jobs — around a quarter of its officers.

The prison has close to 300 inmates. Before the strike, it had around 100 COs, according to striking officers.

For weeks, around half of Adirondack Correctional COs were protesting in the cold outside the prison on an unsanctioned strike — keeping warm by burn barrels, drinking coffee in camp chairs and talking to the media about their demands for safer working conditions and less-grueling hours.

On Wednesday, the road in front of the medium-security prison was empty. The line of trucks was gone, the signs of protest were gone and the COs were back inside. The only evidence of a strike was the mounds of ash left from the burn barrels.

It is unclear how COs felt about this resolution to the strike. Throughout it, none of the striking COs wanted to speak to the paper on the record with their names, fearing retribution. The Enterprise was able to speak with several of them on the condition of anonymity.

Now that the strike is over, though, and COs aren’t protesting in front of the prison, information shared with the Enterprise is only coming from official sources. Most official sources don’t want to share the details.

DOCCS Spokesman Thomas Mailey said in an email.

Adirondack Correctional Superintendent Andrew Boyd said he couldn’t speak about the strike, how many officers here were terminated or what things are like inside now that the strike is over.

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2,000 terminations

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State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello III said the 2,000 state COs who did not return to work Monday were terminated immediately. This is around 15% of the DOCCS officer workforce.

Half of the 13,500 COs around the state were on strike. Martuscello said around 5,000 COs returned to work during the strike, with more than one-fifth returning on Monday — enough for the state to decide to end the strike.

Martuscello would not give an exact percentage for how many DOCCS staff are back to work now. He did say that DOCCS has around 10,000 officers currently at the 42 state prisons.

The state’s Taylor Law requires union permission for public employees to strike. The New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association union representing the COs did not authorize these strikes.

For all the officers who returned, the state is promising no discipline under the collective bargaining agreement and to reinstate their health insurance retroactively.

Taylor Law penalties will remain in place, however, which means COs will have their pay deducted up to twice their daily pay rate for each day they were on strike. The strike cost the state more than $25 million.

In the process, many COs said they lost faith in NYSCOPBA, the union which represents them.

Conditions for inmates living at the prisons have also deteriorated, as there were fewer staff to provide services. Visitations at state prisons have been canceled since the beginning of the strikes.

The New York Times reported that meal deliveries at Adirondack Correctional were being done by Superintendent Andrew Boyd, teachers and counselors.

More than 6,000 state National Guard members were deployed to state prisons by Gov. Kathy Hochul during the strikes to maintain safety. Striking COs estimated there were around 40 here. These National Guard members are staying deployed to assist the facilities in the days after the strike. The state prison system has now lost thousands of employees.

The terminated COs are also being blacklisted from getting jobs at other state, county or local government agencies.

Hochul said Tuesday after signing the executive order.

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Reactions

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Assemblyman Billy Jones, D-Chateaugay Lake, a former CO himself, issued a statement strongly opposing Hochul’s executive order.

Jones said.

he said in another statement.

Assemblyman Matt Simpson, R-Lake George, said in a statement.

Simpson said.

Several attempts at an agreement between DOCCS and the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association union representing the COs failed to meet the striking COs’ demands. This latest deal was reached through bitter communication between the two groups.

The date for COs to return to work changed multiple times throughout the strikes. The final deadline was Monday. To read more about previous phases of the strike, go to tinyurl.com/2uux9nna.

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Promises

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While the initial 85% threshold to end the strike was not met — meaning the deal mediated between DOCCS and NYSCOPBA was not triggered — Martuscello promised to still hold to some of the negotiated changes.

There were multiple attempts to reach a deal to end the strike. Most of them failed. The final deal, which came with a true hard deadline for COs to keep their jobs, was an amalgamation of the previous deals.

Martuscello has promised an and that COs will work 12-hour shifts to ensure they don’t have to endure 24-hour shifts any longer. He said DOCCS will keep programming elements of the HALT Act suspended for 90 days, consider whether to reinstate them for each facility after a month and create a committee to reevaluate the law.

Under HALT, people held in solitary confinement must be offered at least four hours of out-of-cell programming a day, including one hour of recreation.

Usually COs are supposed to work eight-hour shifts. Striking COs said it was common for them to work 24-hour shifts. The agreement says DOCCS will continue mandating 12-hour shifts until normal staffing levels return.

Martuscello said COs will have 2.5-times overtime pay for 30 days from March 6 and raises within two months.

He also pledged improvements to legal mail scanning for contraband and a committee on efficiencies.

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HALT

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The main demand of striking COs was the repeal of the HALT Act.

The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act was signed into law in March 2022.

The HALT law changed the length and reasons an inmate could be put in solitary confinement, stating that long-term solitary confinement is torture. Previously, solitary confinement could be used from up to 23 hours a day over many consecutive days, months or years. HALT reduced the length of time and violations that it could be used in.

Under the act, holding an inmate in any cell for more than 17 hours a day is generally limited to 15 consecutive days, or 20 days in any 60-day period. There are exceptions for violations rising to a level making it necessary, which requires an evidentiary hearing.

Martuscello said the demand to repeal the law could not be met because DOCCS has no authority over changing laws.

DOCCS has been suspending elements of HALT during the strikes.

#HALTsolitary Campaign Co-Director Victor Pate, who experienced solitary confinement when he was in prison, spoke out against the suspension.

Pate said in a statement.

COs say the HALT Act has increased violence in prisons, pointing to statistics that assaults on officers have risen by 76% since it was adopted. They are calling for a complete repeal of HALT. Inmate advocacy groups like the HALT Campaign point to state reviews of the HALT Act, showing it has not been fully implemented. They are calling for the act to be fully implemented.

Pate said.

DOCCS data shows that, statewide, in 2024, there were 2,070 assaults on staff. Data going back to 2018 shows staff assaults were around or below 1,000 from 2018 to 2022, rising slightly before 2022 and then increasing more sharply until today. Assaults on inmates have followed a similar track, increasing even more sharply in 2023. So far in 2025, there have been more than 160 recorded assaults on staff, mostly at maximum security facilities. The vast majority of reported assaults result in no injury, with a handful rising to the level of severe injury.

Pate said.

He points out that 98% of reported assaults on staff between November and January — the latest months available — resulted in no injury (73%) or minor injury (25%) to staff. Minor injury is defined as

According to DOCCS, 43 COs have died on the job since 1861. The last death was in 2011. COs are worried they’ll be the next one.

At least nine inmates died during the strikes — Messiah Nantwi, 22, was allegedly beaten to death by corrections officers in a prison across the street from where another prisoner, Robert Brooks, was fatally beaten by officers in December; one inmate was suspected to have died by suicide; one died in his cell after asking for medical assistance that never came; one died after being wheeled out of his cell complaining of chest pains and the others died of causes not publicly known. The suspected suicide and one other death took place in solitary confinement cells.