UPDATED: NEW YORK TO CLOSE ADIRONDACK PRISON THAT MARKED START OF MASS INCARCERATION
MEDIUM-SECURITY BARE HILL CORRECTIONAL FACILITY WILL CLOSE IN MARCH
Outside the Bare Hill Correctional Facility last March. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
MALONE, NEW YORK Nov. 18, 2025 Last updated: 1:56pm
New York will close one prison and half-close another, state officials announced on Tuesday.
The medium-security Bare Hill Correctional Facility will close in March and half of the Collins Correctional Facility, another medium-security prison, will also close.
Bare Hill is historically significant because it marked the start of a prison building boom in the Adirondacks in the late 1980s as New Yorkers responded to the Crack epidemic and resulting street wars with mass incarceration. Factories moved overseas and prisons replaced them. Bare Hill was the first of three prisons that would be built outside Malone—near the Canadian broder—where shoes, boots and slippers were made beside the Salmon River for more than a century.
At its height in 1999, the state’s prison population was almost 73,000. Since then it has plunged to where its at today: about 33,782, DOCCS said on Tuesday. New York has closed 28 state prisons, “camps “ and work release facilities since 2011.
The union that represents prison guards, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement the “closures will only deepen the crisis of violence, chronic understaffing, and unsustainable working conditions that already plague New York’s prison system.”
“Since January 2023, the number of correction officers and sergeants, the frontline staff who perform the vast majority of daily duties, has plummeted by 28 percent, while the incarcerated population has increased by 7 percent,” the union’s statement said. “Staffing levels are now at their lowest in decades. This is not a system on the brink; it is a system that has already broken.”
Collins—outside Buffalo—is where a wildcat strike by almost all of the state's prison guards started last February, before spreading to 40 of New York's 42 prisons, as The Free Lance first reported.
This reporter remembers the half of Collins that will close because he was imprisoned there from 1992 until 1995. Everyone called it "Side 1." Side 1 was famous for its relatively laid-back atmosphere. I earned an associate's degree during my time at Collins.
Side 1 was also renowned for the real, organic maple sugar served in its mess hall for a few weeks every spring. It was made from maple trees that surrounded the prison, harvested by prisoners on an "outside work gang" and boiled down in a sugar house on prison grounds.
The state agency that manages New York's prison system said no one would be fired because of the closings.
"All 293 DOCCS staff assigned to Bare Hill will be offered positions at other facilities," a news release from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said. Prisoners would be moved to "neighboring correctional facilities.”
DOCCS revealed there were "over 650 vacant staff positions available in correctional facilities located in Franklin, Clinton and Essex Counties." This means DOCCS "will be able to ensure no staff are laid off, mitigating the impact on both staff, their families and the community."
Collins Side 1 would be closed by the "end of the Fiscal Year." What it called "consolidating" would allow prison officials "to more efficiently deploy staff." It was "part of the Department’s ongoing plan to be transparent and consolidate services to ease staffing."
Both prisons won't be mothballed, but "maintained in a state of ready, to include utilities (heat, water, electric, sewage, etc.)."
The murder of Robert Brooks by a beat-up squad of all-white guards while nurses watched at the Marcy Correctional Facility outside Utica on Dec. 9, 2024 exposed an ongoing crisis in New York’s prison system, fueled in part by an out-of-control illegal drug trade and a severe shortage of guards.
“Despite new and aggressive recruitment efforts,” DOCCS admitted, it continues “to struggle to meet staffing demands.”
“The decision to close any facility is difficult for all involved,” the news release concluded. “This decision was decisively made to minimize the effect on staff, and at the same time attempt to close the gap on staffing shortages in our correctional facilities.”
Robert Brooks jr. said Gov. Hochul did not go far enough. She should’ve closed the prison where his father was murdered.
“Close Marcy too” Brooks jr. said in a Facebook post.
Under this year’s state budget, Gov. Kathy Hochul was given the power to close a total of three prisons. A spokesperson for the governor did not respond to an inquiry whether she plans to close any additional prisons.
Jennifer Scaife, Executive Director of prison watchdog group Correctional Association of New York, also called for Gov. Hochul to close Marcy in a New York Daily News editorial published Saturday.
Reached by telephone on Tuesday after news of the Collins and Bare Hill closings broke, Scaife told The Free Lance “not closing Marcy is, I believe, a missed opportunity.”
Still, she said, she understood why the governor chose Bare Hill and Collins.
“We heard many allegations of abuse from staff when we visited Bare Hill in 2022,” Scaife said., “and because Bare Hill is one of three prisons in the town of Malone—near the Canadian border—I think it makes sense to close it.”
“It also makes sense,” she added, “to shut down one side of Collins due to inefficiencies at that facility.”
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS REPORT. CHECK BACK FOR UPDATES.
Send tips or corrections to jasonbnicholas@gmail.com or, if you prefer, thefreelancenews@proton.me