July 21, 2026
FROM STATE SENATOR GEORGE BORRELLO: “Another day, another death behind bars in New York. This time it’s Attica, where an inmate is dead after a multi-person fight reportedly involving two rival groups. Sadly, this isn’t a surprise. It’s exactly the kind of chaos we’ve been seeing for years under Governor Hochul’s watch.
“Since the HALT Act went into effect, inmate-on-staff assaults have jumped 51 percent and inmate-on-inmate assaults have skyrocketed 139 percent. This April alone, three inmates in North Country facilities lost their lives in the span of a single week, reportedly at the hands of fellow inmates. Now Attica joins that grim list.
“Even the HALT Act Committee, made up of stakeholders from across the correctional system and created specifically to evaluate the law, recognized the problems it has caused. The recommendations would restore discipline and accountability inside the prisons and give staff clearer authority to respond to serious and repeat misconduct, among other things.
“None of the recommendations are radical ideas. They’re the product of a committee the Hochul administration created as part of an agreement to end the February 2025 prison strike. And yet the Governor and legislative Democrats have ignored these recommendations for months while the death toll climbs.
“It’s telling that so many of my Democratic colleagues have gone silent as this violence piles up. There is a growing wing of their own party that doesn’t want the HALT Act fixed; it wants the whole system gone. The New York City prison abolitionist movement is expanding. Even NYC’s current Mayor once called the entire carceral system ‘an unreformable public health hazard.’ Governor Hochul needs the support of that wing of her party to survive politically, and it shows. As she ignores the HALT Act Committee’s recommendations and lets this dumpster fire burn instead of putting it out, she looks less like a leader and more like a hostage to the most radical voices on the left. New Yorkers are paying for that with their lives, and correction officers, staff and inmates alike have become collateral damage as Democrats let law and order collapse around them.”
