New York, like states across the country, has seen a drastic reduction in its prison population over the last two and a half decades. While the Empire State’s incarceration rate is still higher than those of a vast majority of nations, the prison population has more than halved since 1999, to around 33,000 people.
To keep up with the dwindling population, former Governor Andrew Cuomo shuttered 18 prisons during his decade in office. In 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul closed six more, including several “supermax” prisons, where doccs kept incarcerated people in solitary confinement around the clock.