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NY lawmakers push bill again for demolition of NY prisons

By Ericka Love

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    ALBANY, New York (WPTZ) — Over the last 15 years, at least five prisons have closed in New York’s North Country due to declining population.

And while the lower incarceration rate is a good sign, the facilities that used to bring jobs to the North Country region are now sitting vacant.

Selling land within a forest preserve goes against the state constitution. To make an exception for facilities like Moriah Shock or Camp Gabriels, the constitution has to be amended.

The process alone takes three years. A constitutional amendment has to pass both chambers of the legislature in two consecutive sessions before it can go on the ballot in the next election.

“We pass it in the Senate every year that I’ve been a senator. But the Assembly, for whatever reason, then they never answer the question. No one can say what the objection is,” Sen. Dan Stec said. “It’s frustrating because, again, time is not the friend of this facility.”

Camp Gabriels, an abandoned prison in Franklin County, closed in 2009 and for the last four years, Stec said he’s consistently passed a bill to sell it. But that same bill has never made it through the assembly.

“We kind of ran out of time, but we’re on a new legislature. So it’s, you know, the clock starts again,” Assemblyman Billy Jones said. ” I mean, I think the public should be, especially the public in the North country, that has an interest in seeing something done here, either clean it up or repurpose it.”

Another former prison — Moriah Shock — continues to sit vacant in Essex County. Two years ago, both Stec and Jones called on the governor to come up with a “Re-use” plan, either for housing or job training, but it still remains untouched.

The only prisons that still exist in our region are Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora and FCI Ray Brook.

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