By Alex Gault
Watertown Daily Times, N.Y.
ALBANY, N.Y. — A man who was convicted of three felonies and then granted clemency by Governor Kathleen C. Hochul will now be overseeing the state prisons through a position on the Commission of Correction that the state Senate confirmed him to on Thursday.
As a part of a whirlwind round of appointment confirmation votes taken this week, a majority of state Senators voted ‘yes’ on the appointment of Alexander Dockery to the newly expanded, now-five member state Commission of Correction, which is in theory, supposed to oversee the state prisons.
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The body in fact is not particularly active, and for the last few years has held meetings that lasted just a few seconds to a few minutes at most. As the state prison system has dealt with a number of murders of incarcerated people at the hands of corrections officers, a prolonged security staff strike and ongoing staffing shortages, the commission has not materially addressed the issues or even discussed them in their brief public meetings.
Dockery will be the third commissioner on the panel — and his appointment fulfills a requirement passed last year that the commission have at least one formerly incarcerated member on its panel.
Those changes came after a massive crisis arose in the state prisons in late 2024 and into 2025; corrections officers killed one man in custody in late 2024, and then went on strike in February of 2025, with thousands of officers walking off of their jobs. Another man was killed by officers in custody during that strike. Even as the prison system struggled, and continues to struggle, to find enough staff to run its 41 facilities, prison reform advocates demanded that steps be taken to make conditions in the prisons better for the incarcerated, safer and to have formerly incarcerated people more represented in decisions about the system.
An omnibus package of legislation passed in that environment last year; advocates said they would demand more, but no serious legislation to address the state prisons has passed this year.
The changes to the Commission of Correction went into effect last month, and Dockery’s appointment is one of the first real manifestations of the changes made last year.
Dockery had his sentence commuted by Hochul in 2023, part of her regular process of offering clemency to prisoners in state custody who have demonstrated a significant change of character. He had served 23 years of a 25-to-life sentence for burglary, weapons possession and trespassing.
As Hochul noted when she commuted his sentence, Dockery’s charged stemmed from robbery attempts on unoccupied apartments where nobody was physically hurt. While in prison, Dockery completed a G.E.D., Associate’s, Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, and worked with the NYU Prison Education Program.
By commuting Dockery’s sentence, rather than pardoning him, Hochul cleared him of any further punishment for the crimes he’d been convicted of, but did not forgive or erase the underlying charges.
State Republicans derided the move. State Senator Daniel G. Stec, R- Queensbury, said he voted against the nomination and was incensed by the decision to allow a felon to oversee the state prisons.
“It’s 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,” Stec said.
And GOP Gubernatorial candidate Bruce R. Blakeman, the current executive for Nassau County, similarly denounced the decision.
“In Kathy Hochul’s New York, if you commit a crime, she won’t just let you out early — she’ll give you the keys to the prison,” he said. “Handing corrections oversight to a convict she personally cut loose is a slap in the face to victims and an absolute betrayal of our corrections officers. On day one, I will end this pro-criminal insanity and hire back every single officer Hochul fired.”
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