Crime Committee Report e.indd - New York State Senate

VII.
2009-10 Inspection of State Prisons
In 2009, DOCS Commissioner Brian Fisher invited the Senate Standing Committee on
Crime, Crime Victims and Correction to inspect the new facilities at Marcy State Correctional
Facility located in Oneida County. The Commissioner also gave legislators and staff a tour of
Sing Sing Prison located in Westchester County. Soon thereafter, along with Senator Betty Little
and staff we visited Camp Gabriel in Franklin County.
Marcy State Correctional Facility is located in Marcy, New York. The prison is located across
from Central New York Psychiatric Center and Mid-State Correctional Facility. These facilities
have historically housed prisoners with psychiatric ailments.
The Commissioner gave Members and staff a tour of the new 100 bed Residential Mental
Health Unit (RMHU) at the existing S-block site at Marcy Correctional Facility. The Commissioner
explained that doubled celled space was being converted to 100 single spaced cells to
provide a heightened level of care to seriously mentally ill inmates who have also committed
serious acts of misconduct while incarcerated.
We walked through specially designed facilities for clinical staff offices and program staff. To
a great degree, the architectural design more resembled a clean and modern hospital clinic.
New doors were designed to maximize visibility around all areas of the complex. Specialized
“re-start” chairs for use in therapy sessions were designed to provide inmates more freedom of
movement while maintaining safety and security for DOCS and OMH staff. The Commissioner
stated that inmates would be offered four hours per day of structured out-of-cell therapeutic
treatment and programming and that the curriculum and protocols designed by the Office of
Mental Health would soon be regarded as a national model of treatment. We saw conference
rooms where a Joint Central Review Committee would be able to “televideo” with the OMH staff
and holistically review the case file of each inmate suffering from serious mental illness.
We were impressed with the sense of excitement accompanying the development of the new
100-bed Residential Mental Health Unit at Marcy. Because of our public hearing regarding the
SHU Exclusion Law we were aware of how sorely needed an alternative to segregated housing
units was for seriously mentally ill inmates. We left Marcy with a greater belief that the SHU
Exclusion Law and Private Settlement Agreement would make profound differences in the
treatment of human beings behind bars.
Commissioner Fisher also walked with us though one of the segregated housing units at Sing
Sing Prison, a maximum security facility located in Ossining, New York. Sing Sing Correctional
Facility was built in 1826. By 1916 all executions by electric chair were assigned to Sing Sing. In
1927, Ruth Synder was executed for murdering her husband in order to gain insurance money.
A New York Daily News photographer hid a camera on his ankle, and at the moment the first
jolt of electricity passed through Synder’s body, he snapped the most famous and only picture
ever taken during an execution. This photo is still in demand today. Most notably, Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg, both convicted of espionage were executed at Sing Sing in 1953.
Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson and Senator Eric Schneiderman met with prisoners who received
college degrees with honors while behind bars. Some were sentenced to life for murder
and some were sentenced to 10 or more years for violent felonies like robbery and burglary. All
of the inmates were polite and communicative. They spoke about the need for more educational
programs for inmates, in particular GED programs for older inmates. They asked the
Members to consider making violent felons eligible for Merit Time. Other men said they were
repeatedly denied parole notwithstanding exemplary conduct while in prison. They pointed
out that most inmates charged with the most serious crimes have the lowest recidivism rates.
They did not complain or deny responsibility for their crimes, but rather rhetorically questioned
the quantum of proof necessary to prove one has paid his debt to society.
Standing Committee on Crime Victims, Crime and Correction | 2009-2010 Report 13