A prison in Washington County, New York is set to close Wednesday after months of community uproar.
The last correctional officers still working at Great Meadow Correctional Facility are being transferred to other prisons across the state this week. The prison employed nearly 600 staff and housed 480 incarcerated individuals.
The budget signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in April allowed for the closure of up to five state correctional facilities.
The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision announced the closure of Sullivan Correctional and Great Meadow in July, citing a “dramatic decline” in prison population; Great Meadow could hold up to 1,600.
Chris Summers, President of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, says the facility’s employees are bearing the brunt of the closure.
“Most of them are going towards Coxsackie, Greene, Washington, Adirondack, Clinton. That’s still—don’t get me wrong that’s still a far ride from Great Meadow considering you’ve got Coxsackie and Greene that are still about an hour-and-a-half, an hour-and-forty-minutes away depending on where they live,” said Chris Summers.
He says some members aren’t as lucky. Officers from Great Meadow were reassigned based on seniority and some ended up being placed as far away as Marcy and Mohawk Correctional Facilities.
“Which is probably a good two, two-and-a-half-hours away from their home. So, most of these folks are going to have to travel. Our members are going to be on the road traveling back and forth. And with the way that the facilities are running, with the mandatory overtime, they might have to do 16 hours then drive two-and-a-half hours home to report back to the next day,” said Summers.
Summers says his members are frustrated.
“It doesn’t give them enough time to sit down and talk with their family and look at and make plans of what they want to do. If they want to pick up and move their family. If you look at it now, here it is it’s already November and the doors are going to close on November 6th. School’s already been in session for over a month so those families already had their kids going to school, they didn’t have enough time to sit down and look if they wanted to relocate,” said Summers.
DOCCS declined an interview with WAMC but said in a statement that by October 30th it had “already transferred all incarcerated individuals to other state correctional facilities based on their security classification, as well as medical and mental health needs.”
An August rally at the Fort Ann Super Stop in support of the facility’s employees drew more than 1,000, including local leaders from both sides of the political spectrum.
“I was talking with a friend of mine who also retired out of there as the head cook and we were just saying yesterday, it’s hard to believe that it’s actually closing this week. It just—can’t grasp it. 100-something years and now it’s gone? Just doesn’t seem real,” said Michael Putorti.
Michael Putorti worked in the prison for 27 years. He opened the Railyard Taproom in Whitehall in 2019 just down the road. Putorti says the rally was too little too late.
“It’s definitely going to impact us. Every day there are officers in there are some officers in there, whether it’s their days off or they come after work, come and have dinner or lunch or whatever it is and we don’t see them anymore,” said Putorti.
Putorti is a life-long resident of Whitehall and says the development makes him and other locals feel forgotten by Albany.
“When you take 600 jobs out of Washington, Warren County area it’s a major, major employer, and by taking that out you’ve done so much harm but yet you don’t care. Because there’s nothing to help us economically,” said Putorti. “What are they going to do to help us economically? Are they going to subsidize when our restaurant is losing money? Are they going to help people who can’t sell their homes now because there’s no jobs here?”
His daughter Allie Putorti says she’s already seen changes in their business and around town.
“We normally have a large group of regulars that come in that are from the prison and throughout the last couple of weeks we’ve been getting a lot of people coming in saying their goodbyes, saying they’re not coming back. Especially people who moved up here to train at this prison and then ended up buying a house up here and starting to settle their family up here now have to pick up and leave and figure out something else,” said Putorti.
Democratic Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner of the 113th district and Republican State Senator Jim Tedisco of the 44th district have criticized DOCCS for what they call a lack of attention to the potential economic impact.
Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg also closes Wednesday.
