Herkimer College announces Pre-Employment Corrections Basic Training certificate program

Herkimer County Community College and the Herkimer County Sherriff’s Office have partnered to offer a new Pre-Employment Corrections Basic Training certificate program. The training course is the first of the two phase program that leads to a correction officer obtaining a certificate of completion for a course equivalent to the Basic Course for Correction Officers.

Herkimer is the only college in the region to currently offer this program. Open to both civilians and sworn correction officers, the first class will run December 28, 2020 through July 17, 2021.

The program will prepare students for a career as a correction officer prior to being hired by a correctional facility. As a further benefit, the program provides correction facilities and municipalities with a diverse pool of trained correction officer candidates.

Students completing this program will receive over 90 percent of the basic training required to become correction officers in New York State. Courses include various law classes, defensive tactics, professional writing, interpersonal communication skills, physical fitness, various procedures required of a correction officer, and more. The firearms and police baton course are not included in the Pre-Employment course as recruits must be hired by a correction agency prior to receiving these two courses of instruction.

Michael Masi, a retired police chief from Little Falls Police Department, will serve as director of the program at Herkimer College, and Carmen Newtown, a lieutenant with the Herkimer County Correctional Facility, will serve as assistant director. Masi has been a police academy instructor since 1997 and has served as director since 2000. He has also instructed in numerous other academies around New York State and has been a member of the New York State Law Enforcement Training Directors Association since 2006.   

“This course covers a wide variety of topics and far exceeds the state minimum course standards for a correction officer, making recruits very marketable for both county and state correction officer positions," Masi said. The minimum number of course hours for a state correction officer is currently 184, and the program at Herkimer includes 432 course hours.

“This will be a tremendous positive for the Herkimer County Sheriff’s Office," Herkimer County Sheriff Scott Scherer said. According to Scherer, it is common for applicants for correctional officer positions to be hired without prior training, so they must be trained through an academy, which can take up to a year to complete. “Without the training, we can only use them in certain situations within our facility. The program at Herkimer College will allow us to hire trained employees and have them fully operational after a brief phase II portion." 

All correction officers are required to complete the Correction Basic Training Course to be employed by a corrections agency. Although the program does not guarantee admission into a corrections agency, in combination with the Phase 2 portion, all students will have met and exceeded all requirements of basic training mandated by the New York State Municipal Police Training Council. Upon successful completion of Phase 1 of the Pre-Employment Correction Basic Training, students will have two years to be hired by a correctional facility and complete the Phase 2 portion. They will then receive a Correction Officer Basic Training Equivalency Certificate.

For more information, visit www.herkimer.edu/corrections or contact the Admissions Office at 315-574-4028 or admissions@herkimer.edu.