Before New York's prison strike, tension was already building

And the Public Service Commission is the subject of a state Senate hearing Tuesday.

Good afternoon — It’s Monday and National Coffee Day.

In today’s CapCon:

• Deep dive: A new report shows how tension was clearly building in New York’s prisons before a weeks-long strike derailed the correctional system.

• The state Senate is holding a hearing Tuesday on how utility rate hikes are considered by the Public Service Commission.

• A new bill would allow workers to use their state-required sick time to attend immigration hearings.

• This Week in New York History: Benedict Arnold’s co-conspirator and treating tuberculosis in the Adirondacks.

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Officers came to the Capitol during the strike (Will Waldron/Times Union)

🔎 What preceded New York’s weeks-long prison strike

Months before a weeks-long strike from correction officers at New York’s prisons earlier this year, signs of tension between staff and the people incarcerated there had become apparent.

Correction officers had publicly warned that prisons had become less safe for staff while incarcerated people claimed that punishment as a result of false accusations was frequent.

A law implemented two years prior — the HALT Act — was intended to lower the temperature on one side of that equation. The law restricts how much time someone can spend in solitary confinement and mandates they receive rehabilitative programming during that isolation.

But the state had struggled to fully implement the law’s requirements by last summer, when a prison watchdog group had finished interviewing dozens of people incarcerated in New York.

The findings from those interviews were released Monday in a report by the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit with a unique oversight role enshrined into state law.

The organization is allowed to interview people incarcerated at the state’s facilities to learn about the conditions at those prisons and recommend changes. There is no other private entity that provides that kind of check on the state.

Its latest report analyzes progress made by the state in implementing the HALT Act through last July, but also provides a window into the culture within New York’s prisons that led to the strike less than a year later.