New York State officials and union leaders representing the 20,000 prison officers disagree about why workers' compensation leave times have grown so much in recent years.
Yet despite such improvements, the amount of workers' compensation leave taken by state correction officers grew to an average of 35 days per claim last year from 24 days in 1997, according to a recent audit of the Department of Correctional Services.
Claudia Hutton, the Health Department's chief spokeswoman, said Mr. Crisafi was on workers' compensation leave for reasons that could not be disclosed under privacy rules and could not be immediately reached.
They said 9 of the 14 prisons they studied in the audit -- including Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, in Westchester County, and Arthur Kill Correctional Facility, on Staten Island -- did not track employees on workers' compensation leave as department regulations require.
And, despite outrage over lavish bonuses and much talk about curtailing excessive risk-taking on Wall Street, President Obama has made only a modest proposal for greater shareholder oversight of executive compensation, leaving it to the French to press for stronger curbs on excessive pay.
A1 Prison Guards's Leaves Longer While a recent audit of the Department of Correctional Services reveals that assaults on New York State correction officers has dropped by half since 1991, the amount of workers' compensation leave taken by correction officers has grown by more than 40percentt.
The rate of inmate assaults on New York State correction officers has dropped by half since 1991, but that has not stopped the amount of workers' compensation leave taken by correction officers from growing by more than 40percentt in recent years, according to a recent audit.
Correction officers in California, whose union is considered among the most powerful lobbying groups in the state, receive up to a year of fully paid workers' compensation leave, but only for injuries directly inflicted by inmates, said Mike Jimenez, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
In New York, correction officers receive full pay for the first six months of workers' compensation leave, after which they must use personal time off, a generous benefit compared with those available to correction officers injured on the job in other large states like Texas and California.
