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September 17, 2009

Prison work conditions discussed

Security down, management up, union workers tell hearing

By DENISE A. RAYMO

MALONE — Union members say they are using the state correctional reports to bolster their argument that prison security is shrinking while administration grows.

New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association leaders spoke at a forum before Assembly members in Malone Thursday and believe manipulation of budget numbers in Albany is putting lives at risk in all of the state's 69 correctional facilities, including the four in northern Franklin County.

They say their ranks are short 680 people and that number continues to grow as more officers retire or leave corrections each month.

The number of inmates has dropped to 60,000 since 1999.

But while rank-and-file numbers declined by 2,500 members under budget cuts and spending-gap closures in the same 10 years, the number of administration positions have ballooned to 907 at the main compound in Albany between 1999 and today.

The state says the number of correction officers is actually down 484 in the past year with another 247 positions expected to be eliminated through retirements and attrition by Oct. 1 with the planned closure of six annexes.

The union says 53 deputy superintendents were hired during a statewide hiring freeze at an average salary of $100,000, but the DOC has been unwilling and unable to explain where the money came from other than to say it was "an accounting glitch."

NYSCOPBA's Albany lobbyist Chris Leo said if $5.3 million was suddenly moved around in any other budget, "I'd guarantee there would be an investigation."

But Eric Kriss, director of communications for the Department of Correctional Services, said the claim "is false, and the union knows it's false."

He said the 53 positions have always been in the agency's budget but they were represented under a different line item in the 2009 budget than in past budgets.

Rather than be listed under a security-service category, the deputies were moved to the inmate-supervision category.

"The problem, and it was a mistake on our part, was that we didn't move the money out of service and into supervision along with them," Kriss said. "The 53 were part of the security staff and always have been."

Correction Officer Rolland Thomas said Bare Hill Correctional has so many managers and Albany personnel "telling us to do some things, we're getting mixed messages.

"And we're a maximum facility with few programs, but we have a program deputy," he said.

Thomas said he is also the range instructor for the facility and sees all three superintendents' vehicles meet at the same intersection sometimes "because (the three prisons are) so close together."

The union's solution to top-heavy management costs is to have Bare Hill, Franklin and Upstate Correctional facilities share one administrator among the three prisons.

The same sharing could be accomplished statewide at other prison clusters, the union says, and it wants to see management's housing stipends and vehicle allowances rescinded across the board.

When DOC inmate-population-data reports were questioned, the union said certain line items were then eliminated from the data sheets on subsequent reports without explanation.

Assembly Member Janet Duprey (R-I-C Peru) said "it's interesting how if they don't like statistics, they take them out."

Correction Officer Scott Cowan said he is often alone when he supervises a recreation period for the 300 to 500 inmates in the yard at one time.

He said his territory is three football fields long, and if a fight breaks out at the far end, he has to pass hundreds of inmates before he can arrive to assess the situation and make a decision.

And, he says, he does it with one officer on backup who is 150 yards the other way.

"By the time he gets to me, I'm into something," Cowan said.

Kriss said that may be true, but there are armed officers in towers above the yard with "other means available to them" to break up a fight if inmates do not comply with orders to stop fighting.

"There is no question they have a difficult job to do, but looking at the statistics we have with the closure of facilities and consolidation, there are fewer assaults and staff assaults," he said.

Brian Cross, a sergeant at Upstate Correctional, said following some of the DOCS regulations also puts the thin security force at risk because the mandated two officers per inmate makes the pool of available emergency officers more shallow.

He said the maximum-security inmates are shuffled from prison to prison, and when new max inmates arrive, some maximum-level offenders already in custody are reclassified to become eligible for housing at a medium-security prison.

"There's no place to put them because we're double bunked," he said.

Kriss said shifting inmates around is a common occurrence and that reclassification is done with inmates who have earned good behavior or are nearing their release date.

He said the state tries to move inmates closer to their home and families because that is the support system the released inmate will likely need to rely on when he or she gets out of prison.

"But if someone is a bad inmate who gets in fights with inmates and fights with staff, they aren't getting reclassified," Kriss said.

Congressional candidate for the 23rd District and Assembly member Dierdre "Dede" Scozzafava (R-I-WF-Gouverneur) said she and the members of the Assembly Minority Statewide Forums on Workforce Issues in the Correctional System present were fortunate to have the information the union shared as the Assembly begins 2010 budget discussions and the committee prepares its final report for release in January.

Recommendations for legislation would be made once the report is issued.

Scozzafava said any budget cutting should be "strategic and make sure we're not putting the corrections officers at a greater risk or communities at a greater risk."

E-mail Denise A. Raymo at: draymo@pressrepublican.com


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