Roughly 150 prison officers huddled around burn barrels across the street from Clinton Correctional Facility in northern New York as they staged a work stoppage Tuesday afternoon. An hour’s drive south, about three dozen guards used a grove of pine trees to shield themselves from the single-digit cold as they picketed in front of the medium-security Adirondack Correctional Facility.

Clinton, Adirondack, and at least 23 other New York state prisons saw guards walk off the job Tuesday — part of an unsanctioned wildcat strike that began at two western New York facilities this week and quickly spread to over half the prison system. Guards are demanding that the prison agency address chronic understaffing and that the state overturn a solitary confinement reform law.

The New York health department is planning to implement a potentially lifesaving 2022 law that it has ignored for years after New York Focus recently reported on the department’s failure to act.

The law, known as the Living Donor Support Act, would reimburse voluntary kidney donors up to $14,000 for their medical costs, travel, and lost wages. Supporters estimate that it could save up to 100 lives a year, at low cost to the state.

The law was required to take effect in spring 2023, but the health department failed to implement it, citing problems hiring staff and designing the program.

But that may soon change. At a legislative hearing last week, health commissioner James McDonald said that the department is “working hard” to get the law off the ground and promised lawmakers that “we’re going to implement it this year.” It’s the first time that the department has publicly provided a timeline for when the law will take effect.

New York’s conviction integrity programs have fallen short of their promise, an investigation by New York Focus and Columbia Journalism Investigations found. Nearly half of them have yet to support a single exoneration. The 12 CIUs outside of New York City — which have been around for an average of six years each and collectively boast three dozen staff members — have only supported 12 exonerations between them.

Interviews with dozens of people and a review of hundreds of pages of government records reveal a CIU system operating almost entirely in secret, with no outside oversight. Most units across the state answer solely to the DAs who created them. Controlled by elected officials, units can become vulnerable to internal pressure to cover up past mistakes. And because there are no legal standards governing CIUs, personnel can commit the same abuses as their colleagues in DAs’ offices — to the detriment of the wrongfully convicted.

Applicants in New York have found the CIU process slow and haphazard, leaving them in limbo, sometimes for years, awaiting a response. More often than not, units denied the applicants identified in this investigation without a review, or rejected them after a reinvestigation without explanation.

In a budget hearing on Wednesday, several Democratic and Republican legislators pressed Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration on its lagging efforts to protect New York’s neediest families from going hungry amid an ongoing rash of thefts.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly known as food stamps — has become a target for thieves who place hidden skimming devices at checkouts.

New York has been among the states hardest hit by SNAP theft. To date, the state has reimbursed $40 million in stolen benefits since 2022. Nearly 3 million New Yorkers used SNAP last year, with the average household receiving $376 in monthly benefits.

Prompted by a New York Focus article last week, Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration is seeking investigations into the mysterious funding behind a $10 million campaign targeting the governor’s plan to remake New York’s home care industry.

As first reported by Gothamist, State Health Commissioner James McDonald sent a letter on Friday to Attorney General Letitia James and Sanford Berland, executive director of the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, urging a formal inquiry into “what appears to be a concerted effort to shield who is bankrolling a lobbying campaign to spread misinformation and lies” about the governor’s transition plan.