A man who spent roughly 23 years inside New York’s prison system now has a seat on the board that polices conditions in it. On June 4, the state Senate confirmed Alexander Dockery, whose sentence Gov. Kathy Hochul commuted in 2023, to the New York State Commission of Correction, the body charged with overseeing the state’s jails and prisons, Corrections1 reported. The fight over whether that is justice or an insult broke down along party lines.
According to Hochul’s own 2023 clemency announcement, Dockery was convicted of burglary in the second degree, burglary in the third degree, attempted burglary in the second degree, and criminal trespass in the second degree, for crimes between 2000 and 2002. He was sentenced to 25 years to life and had served close to 23 years when Hochul commuted the sentence. The governor’s office said the offenses stemmed from break-in attempts on unoccupied apartments, with no one physically hurt.
While incarcerated, Dockery earned a GED, then an associate’s degree, a bachelor’s degree, and a master’s degree through Bard College and the New York Theological Seminary, per the same clemency announcement. The governor’s office said he now works as an assistant and tutor with New York University’s Prison Education Program, helping other incarcerated people earn degrees, and that he intends to pursue a Ph.D. He went in as a burglar and came out a teacher.
His seat exists because of a death. On December 9, 2024, Robert Brooks was punched by corrections officers while handcuffed on a medical exam table at Marcy Correctional Facility, and he died the next day. The county medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. A grand jury later indicted ten corrections employees, six of them for second-degree murder, CBS New York reported. The killing forced Albany to act. The result was a prison oversight omnibus bill Hochul signed in December 2025, and the Commission of Correction was a centerpiece of it.
The Commission of Correction is the state board that inspects prisons and jails, reviews deaths in custody, and sets standards for how facilities are run. The omnibus law expanded it for the first time in years and wrote in a requirement that at least one member be a formerly incarcerated person, the seat Dockery now fills. The law also created a body-worn camera pilot program inside state prisons and raised the commission’s budget, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
The same Brennan Center analysis lays out what nobody put in a press release. Lawmakers originally wanted to grow the commission from three members to nine. Hochul negotiated it down to five, and a provision that would have trimmed the governor’s own appointment power was stripped out before she signed. So the watchdog got bigger, but on the governor’s terms, and she kept her grip on who sits on it. The reform advocates got a formerly incarcerated seat. Hochul got to keep the keys to the rest of the board.
Criminal justice advocates treated Dockery’s confirmation as a milestone. Anthony Dixon, deputy director of the Parole Preparation Project and himself formerly incarcerated, said in a statement that the pick “would signal a major shift in how New York understands leadership, redemption, public safety, and the lived expertise of formerly incarcerated people,” calling it “the kind of appointment that can widen imagination, challenge old assumptions and open doors to a more humane, accountable, and forward thinking corrections system,” per City & State.
Republicans went the other direction, hard. State Sen. Dan Stec voted no and, per Corrections1, called the vote “an insult to our correction officers, who face deteriorating safety conditions due to violent inmates and lackluster contraband protocols, that their jobs and policies governing these facilities are in the hands of someone who has repeatedly broken the law.” Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive running for governor, was blunter, saying that in Hochul’s New York, if you commit a crime, she will not just let you out early, she will give you the keys to the prison, NNY360 reported.
The concern about correction officers is not hypothetical. In April 2026, the corrections officers union NYSCOPBA, led by president Chris Summers, sent Hochul a letter declaring the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in a “full-scale systemic emergency” over surging violence and contraband, CBS6 Albany reported. The officers who answer to this commission already feel they are losing control of the facilities. Putting a formerly incarcerated person on the board that judges them reads as either the outside perspective the system needs or salt in an open wound.
Dockery was not the only confirmation Albany rushed through as the session wound down. The Senate also confirmed John Kagia to permanently lead the state Office of Cannabis Management, an agency that has churned through leaders. Hochul ousted its first director, Chris Alexander, over a sluggish legal-weed rollout, and his successor Felicia A.B. Reid was forced out in late 2025 amid a fight over enforcement against illegal cannabis products, NY State of Politics reported. Lawmakers also moved a batch of Court of Claims and interim Supreme Court appointments. As City & State noted, it is rare for the Senate to reject a Hochul pick, and rarer still to do it without telegraphing the opposition first, which is why Stec’s no vote was a statement, not a threat.
Dockery is one of five commissioners now, and the law that put him there is the same law that let Hochul shrink the board and keep her appointment power. The watchdog he joins is the one tasked with preventing the next Robert Brooks. If you have a complaint about conditions in a New York state facility, or you want to see what this commission does with its new shape, the Commission of Correction publishes its reports, standards, and contact information at scoc.ny.gov.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily
