State Sen. George Borrello, right, speaks at Collins Correctional Facility as State Sen. Patrick Gallivan, left, and State Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt look on.

COLLINS — Local State Sen. George Borrello joined two other senators earlier this month in touring Collins Correctional Facility and criticizing what they see as Albany’s lack of support for prison workers.

Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, who represents Niagara and Orleans counties, took the tour with Borrello and State Sen. Patrick Gallivan, whose district includes the prison. Borrello’s district includes Gowanda, where many of the prison’s workers reside.

“What I heard today was, we don’t have enough staff, we don’t have enough budget. That’s what the management told us,” Borrello said. “A CO that’s been here since midnight last night isn’t going to go home until 4 p.m. this afternoon, has done that for three or four days in a row, watching 42 inmates. One person.

“This is a setup in my opinion,” he continued. “We have an executive branch, in our previous governor (Andrew Cuomo), who was really set on creating chaos and uncertainty in the corrections system.” Borrello added that while Cuomo wanted to be known as “the governor who closed prisons,” the state Legislature is listening to “ex-cons and Twitter” when it comes to corrections facility issues.

Ortt said the tour “was enlightening to me. We had good dialogue with the administration. We talked to corrections officers and we got to see what it is really like inside a correctional facility.”

He said his biggest takeaway was that “the staff inside these facilities … are doing yeoman’s work with the resources they have at their disposal. … but they’re doing so under increasingly ever more difficult situations.”

Ortt complained that when the state closed the nearby Gowanda facility, Collins Correctional had to take over many of its services — but did not get more personnel to help with the added duties.

He added that even though the federal government is injecting billions of dollars into the state and the state government recently raised taxes, none of the extra cash is helping corrections facilities. “We’re not seeing any of that revenue go to support the men and women who work behind the wall, so to speak. These are men and women most of the public doesn’t see every day. They don’t see the conditions they’re working in every day,” he said.

“It is politically not popular to spend money and resources in prisons,” Ortt stated. While rehabilitation of prisoners is a worthy goal, “you know how that’s going to happen? By making sure these places have the staff and the resources they need to do the job that we as New Yorkers expect them to do.

“Let’s put it back into helping the men and women who do a very dangerous job that most of us would not want to do. If you think it’s hard hiring restaurant workers, you can bet your butt it’s hard to find someone who wants to go behind these walls and deal with prisoners,” Ortt declared.

Gallivan said, “We have seen criminal justice policies that favor offenders over law-abiding citizens. We have seen the tilting of the balance towards offenders. That doesn’t just affect our communities, it affects what goes on inside correctional facilities.”

Like his colleagues, Gallivan said the state is not supporting Collins Correctional and other prisons enough, in terms of personnel and policies. “A correctional officer can’t keep an inmate safe if they can’t keep themselves safe,” he said.

Gallivan promised to work with new Gov. Kathy Hochul in the hopes of making help for corrections facilities a priority. “She’s got an obligation to protect these corrections officers to ensure that they have the tools to do their job,” he said.