Criminal Justice New York State

Five Sleepy Minutes With New York’s Jail Watchdog

Jails and prisons across the state are facing many crises. Someone should tell the Commission of Correction.

Chris Gelardi · September 25, 2025

The State Commission of Correction has vast authority to oversee jails and prisons — but it rarely uses it. | Illustration: Chris Gelardi

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Leaders of New York’s corrections oversight agency held their monthly public meeting Wednesday. There was much they could have discussed: The state prisons, local jails, and police lockups they’re tasked with monitoring have experienced a torrent of trouble in recent months.

The state prison system is struggling to recover from a guard strike; a lack of officers has left many incarcerated people confined to their cells for upwards of 20 hours a day. That crisis has led to a backlog in local jails, with some operating dangerously close to capacity. Others are starting to take in more federal immigration detainees, one of whom died in Nassau County’s jail last week. Three people died in a recent two-week span at New York City’s Rikers Island, the ever-embattled jail complex in the process of coming under federal receivership. Prison guards just received yearslong sentences for killing an incarcerated man, and a recent report found that the suicide rate in state facilities doubled last year.

None of those things made it onto the meeting agenda.

Instead, the oversight agency, known as the State Commission of Correction, or SCOC, sprinted through a series of administrative items, rubber stamping jails’ construction plans and requests for exemptions from state regulations. The public portions of the commission’s only recurring public meeting spanned five minutes and four seconds — roughly the time it takes to read to the end of this article.

Attica Correctional facility exterior in grayscale, with bright TV static behind.

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SCOC doesn’t have to operate this way. And it shouldn’t, criminal justice reform advocates argue. On paper, the commission is arguably the most powerful regulator among the state’s sprawling criminal-legal system. State law gives it the authority to visit any correctional facility and inspect any record. It can issue subpoenas and obtain court orders. It can order dangerous or inhumane facilities to make changes — and shut them down if they don’t comply. It almost never wields its full authority, as New York Focus has reported.

In a statement, SCOC said that it limits public meetings to items that require a vote, pointing critics to its annual reports, “which detail the numerous oversight undertakings performed every year in county jails, state prisons, police lockups, secure juvenile facilities, and specialized secure juvenile detention facilities.”

Yet SCOC abandoned state prison oversight decades ago, citing staffing constraints. Its county jail inspections mostly function as checklists to ensure that facilities have required policies on the books. Its powerful medical review board is tasked with investigating suspicious deaths, but takes years to publish its highly redacted reports and rarely orders substantial corrective action. Commission staff evaluate jail health care, but deadly neglect remains rampant. A SCOC subcommittee that can force jails to address complaints almost always sides with facility administration; during its last meeting, it denied 98.6 percent of incarcerated people’s grievances, spending an average of 21 seconds on each case.

“This commission has such wide-ranging power to hold jails and prisons in compliance, to make sure correctional facilities are ‘safe, stable, and humane’ for all incarcerated people,” said Yonah Zeitz, who observes SCOC meetings as director of advocacy for the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. Instead, Zeitz said, commissioners “assume the role of approving variances and construction and have fully failed at their other responsibilities.”

Wednesday’s meeting began with seven requests from local jails for permission to violate state corrections regulations, like by opening and scanning incarcerated people’s mail instead of giving them original copies. Commissioners rapidly approved the requests without discussion.

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“Motion?” “Motion.” “Second?” “Second.” “All in favor?” “Aye.”

The commission then spent roughly 40 minutes in a private “executive session” reviewing a dozen construction projects at state and local facilities — a topic that could jeopardize “security” if discussed publicly, they said.

SCOC meetings may soon look different. Faced with mounting scandals, especially within the state prison system, the state legislature has backed reforms to the powerful agency. This year’s state budget nearly doubled SCOC’s annual budget to $7.1 million and mandated that it inspect every prison and jail at least once a year.

A more robust set of reforms, passed as part of a prison omnibus bill, would expand the ranks of SCOC’s leadership. Three governor-appointed commissioners — two of whom formerly worked in law enforcement — currently helm the agency. If Governor Kathy Hochul signs it before the end of the year, the omnibus would add six new commissioners, with appointment power spread across the legislature, executive, and another prison watchdog, and require that health experts, a formerly incarcerated person, a criminal defense lawyer, and other non-law enforcement members be represented on the commission.

“We know that giving this body the resources to execute on [its] mission will save lives and improve the safety and wellbeing of entire communities,” Assemblymember Emily Gallagher, who sponsored the original version of the SCOC legislation included in the omnibus, said in a statement. “We are so close to having a solution, and I urge the Governor to sign the bill.”

After its “executive session” Wednesday, SCOC commissioners went back on the record to approve a request from Rikers to alter one of its jails’ capacity limits, then quickly ended the meeting.

“Motion to adjourn?” “Motion.” “Second?” “Second.” “All in favor?” “Aye.”