Prison guard union chief: We don’t need a reformer, We need law and order.

[Anti Federalist]

Correction Officers Union Criticizes Incoming Commissioner

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2014...WSJ_NY_NY_Blog

By Sean Gardiner

The head of the city’s largest correction officers’ union criticized the policies of new Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte – even though Mr. Ponte won’t start his job until Monday.

Supported at a press conference Thursday by correction officials from New Jersey and Westchester, Norman Seabrook, president of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, criticized Mr. Ponte for being a non-New Yorker with no experience in the city’s jail system whose planned policy changes will endanger correction officers.

“He wants to eliminate punitive segregation completely,” Mr. Seabrook said, referring to the practice of confining inmates who break jail rules in cells for 20 hours or more a day. “He wants no punitive segregation. That is his claim to fame in Maine. No punitive segregation.”

Mr. Seabrook said although it has been much maligned by civil rights and prisoner advocate groups, “punitive segregation is an effective tool that works.”

“This is not a bread and water thing. … The inmates gets everything he or she is supposed to have. The only thing they don’t get to do any more is to [attack] correction officers,” Mr. Seabrook said.

Mr. Ponte responded to Seabrook’s comments Thursday by saying, “As a longtime correction official, I value experience of professionals like Norman Seabrook and look forward to discussing any issues of concern he would like to bring forward.” A Department of Correction spokesman said in response to Mr. Seabrook’s comments, “In his 40-year corrections career, Joseph Ponte has earned a national reputation as a successful reformer.”

On March 11, when Mr. Ponte’s appointment was announced, Mayor Bil de Blasio said Mr. Ponte had a “national reputation for the reforms he instituted” while commissioner for the Maine Department of Corrections.

“Under his watch, solitary confinement rates were reduced by two thirds,” the mayor said. At that event, Mr. Ponte said that over his more than 40-year correction’s career, he changed his opinion about the effectiveness of isolation as punishment. “If we’re truly trying to make people better, long-term segregation is not the answer,” he said.

But Mr. Seabrook said in Mr. Ponte’s previous position in Maine, he had the authority to move prisoners to the furthest parts of the state, making visitations difficult, as a way of punishing them. That option is not available for offenders here because almost all of the inmates at Rikers haven’t been convicted of crimes but are still awaiting disposition of their cases, Mr. Seabrook said. Officials can only move them to other jails in New York City, he said.

Mr. Seabrook said his correction officers don’t need reform — they need more training in how to handle mentally ill inmates and more officers to help them guard the jail’s 12,000 inmates.

“We don’t need a reformer,” he said. “We need law and order. We don’t need someone to come in here and tell us, ‘Well, this is how we do it in Maine.’ Well, guess what, welcome to New York City. This is not Maine.”

[Occam's Banana]

[...] Correction Officers Benevolent Association [...]