Once, a rule in the labor movement had meaning: an injury to one is an injury to all. In corrections, this saying should carry even more weight, since correction officers know things many people outside the profession do not. They are aware of the necessity of working overtime, of dangerous staffing levels, of violent inmates, of missed holidays, of exhausted families, and of the fact that each day when they go into a prison they have to accept that anything could happen.
Which is why the October 2 statement in which the organizations of correction officers from New York City, Westchester, Orange and Rockland endorsed Governor Kathy Hochul deserves careful examination. In explaining their support, the leaders referred to provisions relating to pensions, death benefits, residency, and place of work. Although these benefits matter, correction officers should be asking a bigger question of their leaders: What has become of solidarity?
Nearly 2,000 Careers Lost
In February 2025, correction officers in New York State started an unauthorized strike that spread across the entire prison system. They raised concerns about chronic understaffing, mandatory overtime, workplace safety, and the HALT Act. The dispute continued for about three weeks and ultimately left around 2,000 correctional officers unemployed.
No matter what people may think about the legality of the strike, it’s wrong to assume that those officers just woke up one morning and decided they didn’t want to work. The system had reached a breaking point; they were husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, and grandparents with mortgages, children, health insurance, retirement arrangements, and many years of career investment.
The Governor’s administration reacted vigorously. In addition to the dismissals, her March 2025 executive order included measures designed to bar officers dismissed for taking part in the strike from taking positions in certain state or local government bodies. Therefore, for correction officers in New York, their past should factor into their unions’ decisions about which political figures they will publicly back.
Fire Correction Officers—Then Keep the National Guard
One of the most striking contradictions concerns the action taken with the New York National Guard. When the strike was underway, Hochul put the Guard on active duty in order to carry out operations within the state’s correctional facilities, an arrangement that can be seen as an emergency measure since thousands of correction officers were missing. The issue, however, is that the National Guard did not simply withdraw after the strike ended, and about 2,000 officers were subsequently discharged.
A year and a half later, National Guard staff were still supporting New York’s correctional system while DOCCS struggled to rebuild its workforce. As late as September 30, 2026, the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs referred to its support of DOCCS as an “Enduring Mission”, with Guard and Naval Militia personnel adding to the number of DOCCS personnel at the correctional facilities.
The National Guard aren’t the issue since they have carried out the duty assigned to them and should be respected for their service. The real policy question is how New York could dismiss about 2,000 experienced correction officers and, more than a year later, still rely on military personnel to assist with prison operations because the professional correction-officer workforce has not recovered adequately.
Since the state has been unable to rebuild its correction workforce sufficiently to end the National Guard mission within its prisons, correction officers ought to question why this situation exists. They should also wonder whether losing so many experienced officers has made the already severe staffing problem even harder to resolve.
Same Uniform, Same Danger
It could be claimed that county, city, and state correction officers have different employers, contracts, and pension schemes. That may be so, but concrete and steel don’t matter who pays your salary. So the danger faced by an officer who is assaulted in a state prison is no different from the danger faced by one who is assaulted in Rikers Island or in a county jail.
The spouse who stays at home while an officer carries out another mandatory overtime shift does not feel any different because the uniform indicates that the officer is with DOCCS, the NYC DOC, Westchester, Orange or Rockland; although the patches vary and the employers are different, it is still the case that these officers are in the same profession and encounter many of the same problems concerning recruitment, retention, overtime, and staffing.
HALT Hasn’t Gone Away
The HALT Solitary Confinement Act was also a major point of controversy during the 2025 correction crisis. Following the strike, representatives from DOCCS, NYSCOPBA,, and other concerned parties reviewed possible changes and reached a unanimous agreement on ten recommendations addressing safety, discipline, and prison operations.
There are valid concerns regarding the need to protect prisoners from abusive isolation, but there are similarly serious issues to consider about separating violent individuals, keeping institutional order, and ensuring the safety of staff and other prisoners. Those involved with the correction union and supporting candidates should ask for specific answers on HALT, staffing, mandatory overtime, recruitment, and officer safety rather than letting those issues vanish when election season comes around.
What Did These Endorsements Buy?
The correction unions in the downstate area gave reasons for their endorsements based on genuine achievements; the union from New York City mentioned the recovery of a retirement benefit that had existed for 20 years, the leaders from Westchester and Orange talked about death-benefit legislation, and those from Rockland referred to provisions relating to residency and employment.
Although correction officers merit those benefits, it shouldn’t be necessary for anyone to ignore what happened to their state colleagues. Politics must not become entirely transactional, since a politician may pass legislation that benefits one union while ignoring the situation of thousands of officers in other parts of the profession.
Even though correction officers can welcome improvements to pensions and death benefits, they can still question how state officers are treated. They may thank the governor for signing beneficial legislation but also ask why the National Guard is still taking part in prison operations and what Albany plans to do about staffing and HALT.
Did Westchester’s Rank and File Get a Vote?
This matters to me because I spent 33 years with the Westchester County Department of Correction and served as a union delegate for 13 years. As a delegate, I remember the executive board voting on political endorsements, but I do not recall those endorsements being brought before the full rank-and-file membership for a vote. There is an important difference between an executive board voting to endorse a candidate and the membership itself voting to endorse that candidate.
That is my personal recollection from more than three decades in the department and 13 years as a union delegate, and it raises an important question about this endorsement: Did the rank-and-file correction officers of Westchester County actually vote to endorse Kathy Hochul, or did the union’s executive board decide this endorsement? If the membership voted, the union should make the results public. If not, the union should make it clear this was an endorsement by leadership—not necessarily the political choice of the correction officers the union represents.
The difference matters because NYSCOPBA conducted its gubernatorial endorsement differently. The union said 1,478 members took part in the vote and that 95 percent of those who voted backed Bruce Blakeman. Whether or not one agrees with someone’s political views, the membership at least had a direct say, and the outcome was made public.
The October 2 statement in support of Hochul did not include the comparable figures showing the results of the membership votes from the organizations endorsing her. If the members did vote, then publish the figures and let them speak for themselves. If the decisions were made by the leadership or executive boards, just state that, since the fact that ‘the union endorsed Kathy Hochul’ does not mean that the rank-and-file correction officers voted in favor of her.
Having spent 33 years in the corrections system, I can say that the individuals who walk the tiers don’t always think exactly like those at the executive table. While union leaders have every right to maintain their political connections, it is only fair that when they link the political opinion of the whole membership to a particular candidate, their members should be given clear information about who actually made that decision.
Same Uniform, Different Loyalty
The ordinary officers in Westchester, Orange, Rockland and New York City shouldn’t be held responsible for the decisions taken by the union leadership. Rather, they should be inquiring as to why the handling of about 2,000 state officers didn’t have greater significance, why National Guard members are still taking part in operations at state prisons, what the plan is regarding HALT and staffing, and whether the union’s endorsement was based on a real vote by the members.
The professional interests of correctional officers in New York go beyond what their political endorsements suggest. An officer patrolling a tier in a state prison is on the same wavelength as one working at Rikers, and the officer serving in Westchester understands the pressures that officers in Orange and Rockland face since they all know what it is like to go into a correctional facility and take on the responsibility of keeping safety and order.
The patches might vary, the contracts might differ, and the government paying the wages might be different, but the risks associated with corrections do not respect jurisdictional boundaries. So long as organized labor continues to regard an injury to one as an injury to all, that belief cannot vanish when elections come around, and political relationships are at stake. People wear the same uniform and face the same dangers—and correction officers are entirely within their rights to question whether they are receiving the same loyalty from those who say they represent them.
