ALBANY — Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Blakeman said Tuesday that he would roll back restrictions on solitary confinement, while accepting the endorsement of New York’s correction officers union.
Blakeman appeared outside the state Capitol alongside members of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association. The union’s president said its members were turning away from Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul over what they described as a continuing crisis inside the state prison system.
“They’ve been speaking for the last three years, screaming at the top of their lungs that they need help,” COPBA President Chris Summers said. He said the union voted 1,380 to 78 to endorse Blakeman rather than Hochul.
“When we sent out this endorsement, they spoke loud and clear, and the vote was overwhelming,” Summers said.
Blakeman assured Summers that “help is on the way,” promising to repeal the restrictions on solitary confinement that correction officers argue have fueled rising violence across an understaffed prison system.
He described Hochul’s management of the prison system as “an insult to the hardworking men and women who serve in our corrections department.”
“It’s a burden on the taxpayers,” Blakeman said. “It’s unsafe to the members of our National Guard. It’s a security breach in our prisons to have people who are untrained serving as corrections officers.”
Blakeman, who currently serves as Nassau County executive, also said he would seek to reverse the so-called HALT Act restrictions if elected governor. He added that increasing correction officers’ pay would be justified.
“I would not close any more prisons,” Blakeman said, referring to several facilities shuttered during Hochul’s tenure.
A management report released by the mayor last week found that the average stay at New York City’s troubled Rikers Island jail complex had climbed from 87 days to 116 days. The corrections union has blamed the nearly monthlong increase on administration policy.
Hochul dismissed approximately 2,000 correction officers in spring 2025 after an illegal strike that lasted nearly a month.
The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision confirmed Tuesday that about 3,000 National Guard troops remained assigned to prison facilities.
The full-time workforce continues to shrink, edging back toward the post-strike low of roughly 11,000 employees.
Union members said the staffing and security problems have placed their lives at risk.
Kim Strawbrich, a correction officer from Hamburg, New York, was forced to retire after three inmates brutally attacked her at Groveland Correctional Facility. One of the assailants repeatedly struck her with a metal lock wrapped inside a sock.
“They pinned me to the ground, started beating, kicking, lock in a sock, choking me unconscious. They wanted to kill me. They told [investigators] that I was going to die,” Strawbrich said.
She said doctors told her that one blow, which caused a traumatic brain injury, came within centimeters of being fatal.
Strawbrich said she had been working at the end of a 24-hour shift when the attack occurred. Before that, she had worked seven straight days that included 16-hour shifts.
“Someone is going to get killed,” she said.
Responding to Blakeman’s event Tuesday, Hochul doubled down on her criticism of correction officers, blaming them for last year’s prolonged standoff.
Correction officers broke the law and “abandoned their posts,” campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said in a statement. The Hochul rep bashed Blakeman’s deputizing of local police to assist federal immigration officials, calling them “an untrained, armed MAGA militia.”
The corrections department said in a statement that it’s working to “strengthen staffing and facility operations and support the remaining correction officers, civilian staff, and National Guard members working tirelessly to keep facilities safe.”
