The New York state prison system has been running on fumes since its corrections officers walked off the job in February.

The three-week wildcat strike ended with the prison agency firing some 15 percent of its guards, while other officers resigned or retired early, grinding prison operations to a halt.

Despite a thousands-strong National Guard force deployed to assist remaining staff, facilities have canceled or cut back on programming and recreation, stripping incarcerated people of educational and work opportunities and leaving many lingering — and baking — in their cells and dorms for upwards of 20 hours a day.

Now, over five months after the strike’s conclusion, New York’s prison system is trying to prevent its ongoing crisis from trickling down to the local level: Jails have had to hold thousands of people meant to be in prison, leading to difficulties staffing housing areas, running programs, and paying for the influx.

At issue is a jam in the jail-to-prison pipeline. Amid February’s chaos, the state prison agency stopped accepting new prisoners. That left local jails, which hold people who haven’t yet been sentenced to prison time, to pick up the slack and hold people technically serving state time.

The prison system resumed intakes for all facilities in May, but progress tackling the backlog has been slow. In July, jails across the state held eight times as many so-called “state-ready” people on average as they did in 2024, a New York Focus analysis of data released last week shows.

Jail capacity varies widely across the state, and some counties have been well equipped to handle the backlog. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office told New York Focus that it has had no problems housing the increased population. The Cayuga County Sheriff’s Office complained of increased costs and space issues during the height of the backlog, but reported that the number of state readies it houses has almost returned to normal.

Western New York’s Chautauqua County, on the other hand, is struggling to keep up. Sheriff James Quattrone told New York Focus at the beginning of August that the uptick in his jail’s population has made it difficult to find enough tablets that incarcerated people use to call loved ones and meeting space for programming. His department has had to cancel some programs as a result, he said.

Quattrone complained about the heightened population’s effects on staff. The jail has had to open up additional housing units, which requires more officers, leading to “many hours of forced overtime,” he wrote in an email. That, in turn, has led to more staffing issues: “When we see forced overtime we also see more use of sick time,” he said. (The prison system may be experiencing the same problem: In a court filing in July, one prison reported that roughly 100 of its fewer than 600 officers were calling out sick every day.)

Last month, the sheriff’s office in Erie County, home to Buffalo, told New York Focus that its incarcerated population was at its highest level in nearly six years, predominantly due to 164 state readies — 15 times more than the daily average last year. The office complained that officers have to work more overtime.

The backlog has also been a financial burden, the Erie County Sheriff’s Office said. The increased jail population “was not an issue that could have been contemplated when we developed our 2025 budget,” a spokesperson said in a statement. If an incarcerated person spends more than 10 days in a county jail after they’re sentenced to state prison, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) reimburses the county $100 a day to house them, the sheriff’s office said. “This is not sufficient to cover the true cost for many of them, particularly those on expensive medications,” the spokesperson wrote.

A new 308-bed jail in Dutchess County, meanwhile, saw its average June population rise to 90 percent capacity, driven in part by a state-ready population seven times higher than last year’s normal.

It’s uncommon for jails to operate near full capacity, as most need wiggle room to separate people of different genders, health and legal statuses, and security classifications. The Dutchess County sheriff, who did not respond to requests for comment, has said his jail needs to keep about 10 percent of beds vacant to comply with state regulations. Dutchess County’s average state-ready jail population dropped by 17 percent from June to July, but the new facility still had an average of only 13 percent of its beds to spare.

In April, the New York City jail system reopened a decommissioned facility on Rikers Island and started housing some men at a women’s jail to deal with the backlog of state-ready incarcerated people. Five months later, the embattled jail complex continues to house hundreds more state readies than it’s used to: a daily average of 590 in August, according to numbers compiled by the Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College. That’s eight times more than the 2024 daily average for New York City jails.

City and state officials have called attention to harm the overcrowding has had on Rikers, which recently came under federal receivership after years of deadly dysfunction. City councilmembers penned a letter to Governor Kathy Hochul highlighting safety issues at Rikers and urging the state to take care of the backlog. DOCCS has assured city officials that it has increased its intake pace to the point where it is housing more new prisoners than the courts are sentencing to prison time.

DOCCS is working to relieve the pressure on local jails even as prisons continue to experience a crisis driven, in the department’s telling, by a severe post-strike shortage in officers. While DOCCS has launched an aggressive recruitment campaign, boosting its security ranks is a long-term process: The prison agency reported employing even fewer corrections officers, sergeants, and lieutenants at the beginning of this month than it did at the beginning of May, the earliest date for which post-strike numbers are available.

Advocates have called on DOCCS and Hochul to mitigate staffing issues by releasing more people from prison. Last month, over 130 groups sent a letter to Hochul calling on the governor to use her clemency power to release incarcerated people early and support legislation to reform the parole system.

“There are so many people inside ready to come home and contribute positively to their communities — and many of us out here ready to welcome them and support their return,” said Nick Encalada-Malinowski, civil rights campaign director for VOCAL-NY.

As of last month, the prison system remained nearly 2,600 officers down from just before the strike. Many programs remain canceled and incarcerated people get precious few hours outside of their cells and dorms.

“DOCCS appreciates the patience and understanding of all the counties and NYC DOC as we recover, recruit, and rebuild,” the department said in a statement.

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This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a non-profit news publication investigating how power works in New York state. Sign up for their newsletter at https://tinyurl.com/368trn9p