N.Y. could close up to 5 prisons this year

Hochul required to give 3 months’ notice to lawmakers

ALBANY — New York will forge ahead with the closure of up to five state prisons in the next year — and with shorter advance notice than some lawmakers and correction employees would like.

Gov. Kathy Hochul will have a year to shutter as many as five correctional facilities, as her administration has cited a decrease in the prison population by thousands of people over the past decade. The plan is projected to save the state millions of dollars, another factor officials have said influenced the decision to include the measure in the state budget.

Hochul’s administration will have 90 days to alert lawmakers about which state prisons it plans to close, according to budget language released Thursday. That’s a blow to lawmakers whose district include prison and had pushed for a six month-timeline. The decision on which and how many prisons may close will likely rely on a number of factors, including the impact that shutting down a major prison on a community that is largely reliant on it for local jobs and other economic considerations.

Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a Washington County maximum-security prison, has been floated as a possible contender for closure, the Times Union previously reported. The prison is one of the state’s largest, with a population capacity of 1,611 inmates, and is in close proximity to Washington Correctional Facility.

Roughly 48,000 people are incarcerated in New York’s state and local correctional facilities, according to a report from the advocacy research center Prison Policy Initiative. The state’s prison population has been declining for years, which state officials indicated led to the decision to shut down more facilities.

Six prisons were shut down in 2022, including the maximum security Downstate Correctional Facility in Dutchess County. Since 2011, the state has shuttered 24 prisons. Hochul has pushed for the sites to be converted to housing and other uses.

Thomas Mailey, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, said the facilities slated for closure have not been identified and referred further questions to Hochul’s press office.

Closing prison facilities may prove to be a boon for housing developers. Under a proposal that has yet to be included in a final spending plan, state leaders would devote $500 million to a fund that would subsidize maintenance and infrastructure redevelopment for state-owned properties that could be turned into housing units. Correctional facilities could be among those properties slated for transformation in the coming years, Hochul has said.