This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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CRIMINAL JUSTICE · July 18, 2024

New York to Close One of Its Most Notorious Prisons

Great Meadow and Sullivan prisons are slated to shut down in November. The state could close up to three more over the next year.

By Chris Gelardi , New York Focus

New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision will close two of the state’s maximum security prisons, including one of its most notorious, the agency announced Thursday.

By November 6, DOCCS will shutter Great Meadow Correctional Facility, in Washington County, and Sullivan Correctional Facility, in Sullivan County, as part of a plan set in motion in this year’s state budget legislation, which allowed the executive to quickly close up to five state correctional facilities over the fiscal year.

Great Meadow has been described as the worst prison in the state. Until recently, the facility had the highest suicide rate of all New York state prisons. In 2021, it accounted for 10 percent of instances statewide where guards recorded deploying their weapons, even though it held 4 percent of the state’s prison population. Incarcerated people have recounted routine staff beat downs and medical neglect.

In a statement, Senator Julia Salazar, the head of her chamber’s corrections committee, pointed to Great Meadow’s “especially high rates of violence and repression.” “I hope the facility’s closure will also bring relief to those who have experienced it,” she said.

New York, like states across the country, has seen a drastic reduction in its prison population over the last two and a half decades. While the Empire State’s incarceration rate is still higher than those of a vast majority of nations, the prison population has more than halved since 1999, to around 33,000 people.

To keep up with the dwindling population, former Governor Andrew Cuomo shuttered 18 prisons during his decade in office. In 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul closed six more, including several “supermax” prisons, where DOCCS kept incarcerated people in solitary confinement around the clock.

Still, DOCCS has far more space in its 44 remaining prisons than incarcerated people to fill it. Currently, 65 percent of Great Meadow’s nearly 1,600 beds are empty — one of a dozen facilities where more than 40 percent of slots are unfilled, as New York Focus reported in February. Sullivan is a quarter empty.

“These closures are a necessary action in response to the needs of both incarcerated individuals and staff, as most DOCCS prisons are operating well below their respective capacities,” Salazar said.

The diffuse incarcerated population has contributed to a staffing crisis within DOCCS. New York’s prisons are tied for the most richly staffed in the country in terms of corrections officers: There are more security personnel than incarcerated people at Great Meadow, for example. But support and health staff are sparse.

Lack of adequate medical and mental health care in DOCCS facilities is a top complaint among incarcerated people and their advocates. And according to the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit prison oversight body, one in four health services positions was vacant as of January 2023. Another 19 percent of support services positions, like social workers, and 17 percent of programming positions, whose staff teach incarcerated people life and job skills, were vacant at that time.

The New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents correction officers, slammed the closures as a band-aid solution to the problem of understaffing.

“The State of New York needs to take bold and creative action to fix the staffing issue that is creating low morale and pushing members to their limits. Closing prisons and expecting different results certainly is not bold and creative, it is shortsighted,” the union’s president said in a statement.

It remains to be seen whether DOCCS will close more facilities this year. While Great Meadow and Sullivan are the only ones currently on the chopping block, DOCCS said in a statement that it will “monitor the effects the closures have” on staffing and operations to determine whether it needs to close up to three more. According to the agency, all Great Meadow and Sullivan staff will be offered positions at other facilities.

“If we do not see an increase in recruitment, it may be necessary to consider additional closures within the fiscal year,” DOCCS said.