Kellan Livsey still walks around with a photo on his phone of the day he became a New York State corrections officer.
The 31-year-old followed in the footsteps of his grandparents toward a career in state prisons, which are major employers in the area near the Canadian border. Looking at the photo now, Livsey sees the impact of mandatory, back-to-back 12-hour shifts.
“The job makes you age, I’ll tell you that,” he said.
New York’s prison system is stuck in a cycle of rising violence and understaffing. The state is currently struggling with a 56% vacancy rate among prison workers.
The problem grew worse after Gov. Kathy Hochul fired about 2,000 guards following a three-week wildcat strike in 2025. Guards blamed poor working conditions and new laws passed by Democratic legislators. Advocates for prisoners linked the strike to the indictment of 10 corrections officers in connection with the beating death of Robert Brooks, who was murdered at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica.
Hochul has described the staffing shortage as a “crisis.” She says she’s doing her best to recruit and retain prison employees, but the state has spent more than $1 billion to deploy the National Guard to help staff correctional facilities.
Republicans, including Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who is running against Hochul, blame Democrat-backed laws. On the campaign trail, Blakeman is pledging to repeal them.
The next governor will inherit a correctional system still struggling with a declining number of prisoners, the aftermath of the strike, and competing proposals for reform. It’s all enough to keep people like Livsey away from a career in corrections.
Stability and a good retirement
When Livsey was growing up in Plattsburgh, there were eight state prisons within an hour's drive. He felt like everyone he knew worked at a correctional facility, and it was hard to pass up a stable job that paid more than most other jobs in the North Country.
“It’s good money, good benefits, retirement,” Livsey said. “I looked into [it] and that’s what I wanted for myself. At the time, it was only me. I wanted to set myself up for a good retirement.”
Livsey began his career at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora in 2018. The state has closed 13 prisons since, which Livsey said made his job feel unstable.
Then Democrats in the State Legislature passed the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, known as the HALT law. It took effect in 2023.
Advocates and many lawmakers applauded the new limitations on solitary confinement. But many officers have said it stripped away their ability to punish incarcerated people for bad behavior. Striking officers on the picket line carried signs calling for the HALT law to be repealed.
Hochul agreed to study issues about the HALT law as part of a settlement to entice striking workers back. Changes recommended by that study haven’t been implemented.
While most guards returned, a gap remains.
“I am trying so hard to deal with the prison staffing shortage crisis, and it is a crisis," Hochul said at an August press conference. “I have launched a recruiting program, lowering the age for people to become corrections officers. We’ve put more incentives out there, we’ve changed pensions, we are doing a massive recruitment around the state."
Part of the problem is timing. The state’s prison population peaked in the late nineties, so now many officers are hitting the 25-year mark when they can retire with a full pension. Along with the thousands of officers who were fired last year, nearly 800 officers retired, according to staffing records from the state.
The number of new officers who graduated last year from the training academy is up more than 40%, but the state is struggling to retain those recruits. More than 660 were assigned to prisons, but by the end of the year, more than 250 had resigned.
“They want to work in the prison system; they don’t want to work for Kathy Hochul," Blakeman said.
Blakeman said he would address the staffing crisis by hiring back the thousands of officers that Hochul fired and get rid of the HALT law. His stances earned him the endorsement of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, which represents state prison guards.
“We need help with staffing, officer safety, [limits on] mandatory overtime, compensation, benefits, and the future of corrections,” NYSCOPBA President Chris Summers said. “Bruce, we need your help.”
Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said the governor has invested in public safety and stands by her move to fire striking officers.
“When correction officers broke the law, abandoned their posts and put their colleagues and surrounding communities at risk, Governor Hochul acted to restore order and hold them accountable,” Radulovacki said.
The effects of solitary confinement
But advocates for prisoners say rolling back the HALT law would make conditions worse for everyone in prison and do nothing to solve the staffing crisis. Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist from the Prison Policy Initiative, said segregated confinement is akin to torture.
“Widespread solitary confinement worsens people’s mental health. It isolates them from their families," she said. "It makes it impossible for them to access programs that they might have been depending on for some kind of stability or improvement, and it ultimately just makes situations worse.”
Bertram believes the state should keep shrinking the prison system by closing facilities, condensing the inmate population, and releasing elderly inmates. She said she has sympathy for regions like the North Country that have relied on prisons to prop up rural economies, but said that is not a reason to keep people locked up.
"I think it’s very sad what’s happening to a lot of towns, now that there are fewer people in prison, which, in and of itself, is a good thing," said Bertram, "but the solution is not to go back to the days of extreme mass incarceration.”
Livsey resigned as a corrections officer this spring and now drives a tractor-trailer.
"Yeah, I’m working more hours than I did with corrections,” he said. “But I’m coming home every night.”
