Criminal Justice New York State

The Catch-22 Keeping New Yorkers Stuck in Prison

Nine months after the prison guard strike, incarcerated people are being denied early release after not completing programming that they don’t have access to.

Rebecca McCray and Emma Rosenberg · January 26, 2026

Advocates at four legal organizations told New York Focus they’ve had incarcerated clients whose release dates were delayed because they weren’t able to participate in programs in the last nine months. | Photos: viviamo; thawornnurak/Getty Images | Illustration: Leor Stylar

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John Luke Papadopoulos knew the blue envelope in his hands could change his life. Two weeks after his September hearing before the Board of Parole, he hoped it would bring news of his release from Franklin Correctional Facility. Instead, he opened it to find that the board had denied his release.

Among the reasons the board cited was that Papadopolous, who is completing a one- to three-year sentence for aggravated assault, had not spent any time in required substance abuse and anger management training. “It is recommended that you participate in all the programs available to you,” read a memo accompanying the denial, both of which were shared with New York Focus.

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When he entered prison in June, DOCCS staff told Papadopoulos that in order to qualify for early release, he had to complete the two commonly required programs. But Papadopoulos hadn’t intentionally avoided them. At the time of the hearing, the prison hadn’t been offering the programs for seven months, since a three-week strike by correctional officers upended the system.

When more than 12,000 correction officers walked off the job last February, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS, locked down the 42 prisons it operates, pausing the system’s educational, vocational, and therapeutic programming — much of which is required for release or to earn time off a sentence. Two thousand officers were fired.

More than nine months later, the prison system is still reeling, and staffing levels remain lower than they were a year ago, leaving people like Papadopoulos stuck in limbo. Some of the programs at his prison technically resumed in November, but he’s been on a lengthy waitlist since his parole denial, and the programs that have restarted are often canceled.

“You give us these stipulations, saying that if we complete these programs, you’ll send us home, but you’re not even offering the programs to us,” said Papadopoulos. “We can’t complete anything, because you don’t have the staff to do it. So why are we here?”

Advocates at four legal organizations that represent incarcerated New Yorkers told New York Focus they’ve had clients whose release dates were delayed because they weren’t able to participate in programs in the last nine months. Some were denied time off by prison committees that calculate time earned for program participation and good behavior, while others, like Papadopoulos, were denied by the Parole Board.

“We all want to get home, we all want to do all these programs. ... But you’re not running anything.”

—John Luke Papadopoulos, incarcerated at Franklin Correctional Facility

“It seems sort of hard to say this with a straight face,” said James Bogin, senior supervising attorney for Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, or PLS, which provides legal aid to incarcerated people. “Why did they fail to participate? Because there were no programs.”

PLS executive director Karen Murtagh said the organization has seen “dozens and dozens” of such cases. PLS is trying to help the people who reach out to their office, but there are so many cases that they can’t keep up, she said.

The full scale of the problem is difficult to assess, because the system’s post-strike recovery has been piecemeal and slow.

DOCCS spokesperson Nicole March said in December that many facilities had started to offer programming at pre-strike capacity, and recently added that college programs are running in all 36 facilities that offer them. “No facility is operating without programs,” she said, though she acknowledged last month that some volunteer-run programs had not restarted.

Still, March said, it shouldn’t affect “good time” — prisoners’ ability to earn a shorter sentence. “The Department has maintained longstanding policy to grant good time when an individual was available to program but not able to participate or complete a recommended program(s) for reasons beyond their control,” she said.

Accounts from 14 incarcerated people at 12 different prisons who corresponded with New York Focus by phone or email, as well as advocates, prison watchdogs, and program administrators, paint a different picture. Even where programs are running, long waitlists and backlogs for programs that existed before the strike have only grown during the prison system’s recovery. Some programs that have resumed are running on a much more limited basis.

“I wrote to the program committee and they said ‘Oh, you’re on the waitlist,” said Papadopoulos. “That’s the response to everything around here: You’re on the waitlist.”

Program participation can impact release dates in different ways, depending upon a person’s sentence.

Nearly all prisoners, with the exception of those serving life sentences, are given “conditional release dates,” or early release dates contingent on program participation and avoiding disciplinary infractions.

The time off people can earn — also called “good time” or “merit time” — and the type of programming that helps them earn it depends on the nature of their convictions and sentences. People serving time for violent offenses, for instance, can earn six months off their sentences.

Required programming can include substance abuse programs and anger management programs, or educational and vocational ones.

The Parole Board, which can grant people earlier release at its discretion, weighs program completion heavily.

Participation in programs is essential to parole, legal experts told New York Focus. When an incarcerated person goes before the Parole Board, a certificate of program completion can serve as evidence that they’re turning their life around. Partial completion doesn’t carry the same weight. In other cases, successful program completion can help people earn time off their sentences.

“In so many ways, [programming] makes these complicated roads to release in some cases happen faster, and in other cases happen at all,” said Legal Aid attorney Sophie Gebreselassie.

Ideally, they also help fulfill the correction system’s rehabilitative purpose. The parole board told Papadapolous as much in its denial letter: Participation in the required programs could “help you gain insight if there is any correlation between alcohol and you becoming aggressive and physically assaultive towards others,” they wrote.

“Programming is very important in the Board’s consideration when we’re talking about rehabilitation,” said Otis Cruse, who served as a Parole Board commissioner from 2015 to 2023.

He emphasized, however, that “programs are not the only consideration.” In Papadopoulos’s case, the Board also cited concerns about prior alcohol consumption and a failure to report to his probation officer. (Papadopoulos denies these accusations.)

The promise of earning time off a sentence can be a powerful motivator for incarcerated people, and early release means less time away from family and loved ones. Papadopoulos, for example, missed his 4-year-old daughter’s birthday, and hasn’t seen her since he was first incarcerated. Franklin Correctional is in Malone, near the Canadian border, too far a trip for his daughter and her mother to make from New Jersey.

“I’m missing some of the most important times in her life,” said Papadopoulos. “I miss her.”

In the months after the strike, DOCCS Commissioner Daniel Martuscello and Governor Kathy Hochul justified keeping the system in a state of emergency, and maintaining the pause on programming, by citing staffing shortages. Without sufficient security staff, DOCCS has said it can’t move incarcerated people to and from classrooms or between facilities, or help instructors run some programs. On December 19, Hochul issued an executive order extending the system’s official state of emergency.

Papadopoulos says he knows at least 10 other people at Franklin who have been denied release for failure to take part in programs that aren’t consistently being offered. Hearing about denials has left some incarcerated people worried the same may happen to them. David Haigh, incarcerated at Woodbourne Correctional Facility, is already concerned about his 2027 conditional release date as the waitlist for substance abuse training and anger management training there grows.

“I spoke with the [substance abuse] instructor, and they have assured me that if I am not placed in time for my early release date, that it will not be held against me,” said Haigh. “This is what they say, but what actually happens appears to be the opposite.”

“It seems sort of hard to say this with a straight face. ... Why did they fail to participate? Because there were no programs.”

—James Bogin, Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York

Until recently, Haigh worked in the facility’s grievance office as a clerk, reviewing complaints filed by incarcerated people. Since the strike, he says he’s seen dozens of grievances from people awaiting placement in programs, some of whom have already been denied release, and some of whom are anticipating denial.

March, the DOCCS spokesperson, denied that anyone is being denied time for this reason. “Eligible individuals are not denied good time when they were available to participate in required programming but were unable to do so for reasons beyond their control, including program interruptions,” she said.

“If true,” said Cruse, the former parole commissioner, “I think it’s considerably unfair that potential releases are withheld because programs are not offered.

“It’s not their fault.”

Though doccs said that most programming has resumed in almost all prisons, the experiences of incarcerated people who spoke to New York Focus for this story reflect uneven progress throughout the state.

At Woodbourne Correctional Facility, one man said programs had partially resumed as of mid-November, while another person incarcerated at Five Points said he was stuck in his cell for 23 hours a day without any access to programs for the last nine months. At Wyoming Correctional Facility, a man said he hadn’t been provided with disability accommodations that he needed to participate in programs since February — an issue that Legal Aid attorneys also mentioned hearing about from clients. A woman incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility told New York Focus that all mandatory programs were running there.

“All facilities, including Five Points and Bedford, continue to make every effort to ensure that they provide as much out of cell time as possible while also ensuring the safety and security of the incarcerated and staff,” March said.

Meanwhile, Papadopoulos said staff at Franklin posted a memo in his prison dorm in early November with a long list of programs that would now be eligible for participants looking to earn time off their sentences. But none of those programs were running at the time, he said, and only some are running as of January — though they often get canceled due to understaffing.

Even facilities that have resumed programming may not offer it consistently. Two program administrators interviewed by New York Focus said their ability to provide programming often changes week to week or even day to day, depending on staffing issues. (They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their ability to provide programs in the state’s prisons.)

One administrator said that while they were able to resume their program in one prison last fall, they haven’t been able to run the program at another since the strike began in February.

“Scheduled programs may be subject to interruption due to staffing needs or other operational considerations. This does not mean programs are not running,” March said.

For advocates fielding exasperated calls and letters from incarcerated people, the solution to the problem is clear. For years, many have called on state lawmakers to pass legislation called the Earned Time Act.

Close-up of the corner of a prison cell.

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Among other changes, the legislation would make it easier to earn time off a sentence through avenues other than programming, like good behavior, and increase the time that can be earned. They argue this would help reduce the prison population, which would also help ease staffing constraints.

The key is creating a path to earned time that “isn’t dependent on whether everything’s fully staffed or whether there’s a crisis at the moment,” said Lauren Nakamura, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project.

Meanwhile, Papadopoulos said he has spoken to multiple people at Franklin who were able to successfully appeal programming-related parole denials. But the appeals process requires resources, and can take months.

“We all want to get home, we all want to do all these programs,” said Papadopoulos. “But you’re not running anything. And now we’re sitting here and we’re like, ‘Wow, so what are we supposed to do?’”