N.Y. prisons are in crisis. The first step to fixing them is simple.

New York’s pris­ons are plagued by a long­stand­ing crisis of phys­ical bru­tal­ity, illegal sol­it­ary con­fine­ment, med­ical neg­lect and other abus­ive con­di­tions that should shock every New Yorker’s con­science. This crisis has only been exacer­bated since last year’s illegal strike by cor­rec­tion officers.

A year and a half after the strike ended, the Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions and Com­munity Super­vi­sion is still fail­ing to carry out basic oper­a­tions, com­ply with basic legal require­ments, fully restore fam­ily vis­its or end rampant lock­downs and deni­als of pro­grams and ser­vices across the sys­tem. And this is all in a sys­tem on which the state is spend­ing over $5 bil­lion this year, includ­ing $1 bil­lion just to have the National Guard sup­ple­ment the nor­mal prison staff.

DOCCS con­tends that things are worse after the strike because they have fewer officers than they need for the cur­rent num­ber of incar­cer­ated people, and their main strategy has been to try to recruit more officers. Des­pite a year and a half of these efforts, staff­ing levels remain stag­nant. This recruit­ment strategy is clearly not going to solve this crisis. Nor would it be solved by spend­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to build a new prison — mov­ing the same bru­tal prac­tices into a shiny new build­ing.

The good news is that there are solu­tions. If DOCCS claims it can’t carry out basic prison oper­a­tions because there aren’t enough staff for the num­ber of people who are incar­cer­ated, and if des­pite a year and a half of “aggress­ive recruit­ment” the num­ber of staff mem­bers is not increas­ing, the clear solu­tion is to reduce the num­ber of people who are incar­cer­ated.

While crit­ics may raise ques­tions about pub­lic safety, there are many thou­sands of people who have spent years, even dec­ades, incar­cer­ated; who have demon­strated a trans­form­a­tion in their think­ing and beha­vior; and who pose little to no risk if released, even accord­ing to DOCCS’ own risk assess­ment tools. What’s more, releas­ing these people would improve pub­lic safety, because they would serve as cred­ible mes­sen­gers, viol­ence inter­rupters, re-entry and peer recov­ery coun­selors, small-busi­ness own­ers and entre­pren­eurs, non­profit lead­ers, harm reduc­tion experts and more.

There are also thou­sands of people who are aging and dying behind the walls. They pose the least risk of return­ing yet carry the highest incar­cer­a­tion costs.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and DOCCS should exer­cise their exist­ing author­ity to expand the use of exec­ut­ive clem­ency, med­ical parole, work release, home con­fine­ment and other release mech­an­isms. The gov­ernor and state law­makers should also back legis­la­tion that would expand oppor­tun­it­ies for con­sid­er­a­tion of release for people who have trans­formed their lives and demon­strated their read­i­ness, includ­ing the Elder Parole, Fair and Timely Parole, Second Look, Earned Time and Chal­len­ging Wrong­ful Con­vic­tions Acts.

At the same time, the gov­ernor, DOCCS and the Legis­lature must take con­crete steps to trans­form the envir­on­ment inside the pris­ons, start­ing with new lead­er­ship. Gov. Hochul should remove DOCCS Com­mis­sioner Daniel Martus­cello III and bring in new offi­cials com­mit­ted to root­ing out racism and bru­tal­ity.

Those offi­cials must, in turn, fully imple­ment the HALT Sol­it­ary Law. Pro­gram­ based altern­at­ives to sol­it­ary con­fine­ment have been proven to reduce viol­ence and improve health and safety. Although the HALT Sol­it­ary Con­fine­ment Law leg­ally requires real altern­at­ives to sol­it­ary con­fine­ment, DOCCS has refused to even attempt to imple­ment such pro­grams.

New DOCCS lead­er­ship must also take steps to end officer bru­tal­ity and restore and expand fam­ily vis­its, rehab­il­it­at­ive pro­grams, out-of-cell time and basic ser­vices.

In addi­tion, in the Legis­lature’s next ses­sion, law­makers should back legis­la­tion such as Rights Behind Bars, the CARE Act and the Vis­it­ing Rights Bill to ensure people’s basic human rights are pro­tec­ted in law.

The real­ity is that as long as pris­ons exist, they will inflict harm. However, sig­ni­fic­antly redu­cing the num­ber of people incar­cer­ated and using proven inter­ven­tions will improve safety inside and out­side the pris­ons, reunite fam­il­ies and save lives. The only ques­tion is whether the gov­ernor and Legis­lature have the polit­ical will to carry out these com­mon-sense solu­tions.