Review addressed violence, health care, conditions
An independent report on conditions in 2023 at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, a medium-security men’s prison that straddles Beacon and Fishkill, documented sometimes contradictory accounts of staff interactions and violence.
The 64-page report was issued on May 8 by the Correctional Association of New York, about 10 months after an inspection at the facility. State law requires CANY to visit and evaluate each of New York’s 44 prisons every five years; the agency last visited Fishkill in 2020.
(Fishkill Correctional is one of two state prisons near Beacon. The other, the Downstate Correctional Facility, closed in 2022.)
During the two-day evaluation, which took place in July, a team of 11 CANY representatives met with state prison officials and medical and mental health staff. The CANY team observed housing facilities, the work-release unit, regional medical unit and other parts of the prison. Members of the union that represents prison staff declined to speak with CANY.
Based on a survey of 109 prisoners (of the 1,372 then incarcerated), CANY concluded that prisoners were “generally satisfied with access to medical care.” However, many inmates believed that the care they received was substandard. They also indicated that prison officials were slow to respond to sick calls or to arrange specialty care.
The inmates noted a shortage of nurses for emergencies, which prison officials conceded, saying Fishkill was short 50 percent of its nursing staff. At the time of the visit, the prison was down 100 staff members overall. CANY said those staffing needs matched data reported by the state in January 2023, suggesting many of the open positions had been unfilled for at least six months.
Regarding mental health care, prisoners in specialized units gave “mostly positive reviews” of the staff and programs, according to the report, while the general population wanted more mental health support.
Sumeet Sharma, a CANY director, said Wednesday (May 29) that the team observed high temperatures throughout the facility and noted that the exterior windows in cells were closed. The superintendent later said that the windows had been opened, according to the report, but the ventilation system in some housing units recirculates air, “which means that on a hot day, the air blowing through the vents is hot.”
A major concern for the team, Sharma said, was access to health care, especially since Fishkill has a regional medical unit that provides care for chronically or terminally ill inmates. He said lawmakers are considering a bill to give the state Department of Health oversight over medical care in prisons.
The inmates surveyed by CANY reported mixed experiences with Fishkill’s 850 security officers. Those in the general prison population generally described a positive culture with effective communication, but others reported assaults by staff and the need for security cameras. The prison launched a pilot program for officer-worn body cameras in 2021 and 2022 but CANY was told the devices “stopped working.”
The report said plans to install fixed cameras and experiment again with body cameras are in place, but there is no timeline for either.
Sixty-one percent of the prisoners surveyed said they had seen or experienced verbal, physical or sexual abuse by staff members. CANY said that “unusual incident” data showed that Fishkill had higher rates than the state prison system at large of assaults, both on staff and prisoners, and staff use of force, particularly the use of a chemical irritant (see above).
And while only 20 percent of the inmates considered the grievance process “fair,” 44 percent — a higher rate than at other medium-security prisons — said the same of the disciplinary system.
Sharma acknowledged the challenges the CANY team faced in writing its report. He said the association sometimes received conflicting accounts through “administrative data” provided by the state on the frequency of events such as assaults or use of force versus what it heard from prisoners. “It’s hard to assert a truth when there are multiple experiences being reported,” he said.
Laurie Dick and Liz Oliver of Beacon Prison Action, an advocacy group, accompanied the CANY team on its visit and said this week that their organization regularly receives complaints from Fishkill prisoners’ families who fear for the safety of their loved ones. “Our impression is that there is not a positive relationship between the staff and the people who are incarcerated,” Dick said.
CANY said that, based on informal conversations with security staff, employee morale at the facility appeared to be “relatively high,” although other parts of the report contradicted that conclusion.
For example, staff expressed concerns about their ability to communicate with their families and meet their essential needs while working, it said. Some staff members reportedly could not contact their families while working mandatory overtime because there is only one pay phone in the prison. Additionally, staff cannot leave their posts while on duty, making it difficult to drink enough water when working overtime or long shifts, the report said.
The report concludes with a 15-page response to its findings by state prison officials. They said the department maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward verbal or physical abuse and that allegations of verbal, physical and sexual abuse “by some incarcerated individuals are not consistent with the experiences and sentiment from staff and challenge the positive feedback reported by the majority” of those incarcerated at the facility.
The state said inmate assaults on security staff have “dramatically increased” since the introduction of laws requiring alternatives to long-term solitary confinement. Violence among inmates has also risen because of increased gang activity and because inmates use it to get transferred to another facility, it said.
Despite an overall rise in violence at New York prisons, the use of force at Fishkill is lower than average, the department said, except for chemical agents, which it called “an effective tool to quell disturbances and incarcerated individuals engaged in violent behavior.”
