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Current and former correction officers recite "The Lord’s Prayer" before starting a news conference to bring attention to prison working conditions on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y. Correction officers who were fired or lost their health care coverage during a recent wildcat strike attended the event.

The double standard is unmistakable: Some of the very folks charged with guarding (and safeguarding) New York's most serious lawbreakers appear to be breaking the law.

The law in question is the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, which restricts the amount of time prison inmates can spend confined alone and mandates that they receive rehabilitative programming when they are isolated. The HALT Act acknowledged that solitary confinement amounts to cruelty when overused and that it's counterproductive to the prison system’s ostensible goal of rehabilitation.

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