Camp Georgetown

Camp Georgetown celebrates a birthday this month. October 3rd will be the 40th anniversary of the arrival of the first 10 "campmen" who were assigned to conservation projects in the state's forests and parks. Four decades later, Georgetown's inmates still perform conservation duties, but have diversified by adding service to local governments and not-for-profit agencies in the central New York region. And throughout the life of the camp, its neighbors have generously reciprocated. Volunteers routinely come into Georgetown to brighten holidays, supplement educational and religious programming, provide entertainment and recreational activities and share their life experiences and expertise in a variety of community preparation programs.

Georgetown, located on the Madison-Chenango county line southeast of Syracuse, was the state's fourth corrections a forestry camp. The camps were a cooperative venture by the state departments of Correction and Conservation, promoting the aims of both agencies to "salvage our resources, both human and natural." In the phrase of the late Joseph F. David, Jr., former public information officer for corrections, "better lives and better lumber" are the camp program's products.

Two unrelated factors - the demise of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the rise of juvenile delinquency - were the immediate impetus for the camp program. The CCC was a 1930's New Deal public works program with three aims: first, create jobs to combat unemployment during the Great Depression; second, promote environmental conservation; and third, build "good citizens through vigorous, disciplined outdoor labor." Thousands of young men (aged 16-25) enlisted in the corps, often re-upping when their periods of service expired. Under the command of U.S. Army officers, the CCC's "soil soldiers" planted millions of trees across the U.S.

The CCC disbanded with the onset of World War II (many of the units were mustered into the regular army), and was not resumed after the war even though basic environmental management principles called for a continuation of the work. The trees were ready for thinning, pruning and harvesting, but the Depression was over and the manpower was gone.

Simultaneously, the country was becoming exercised over what it saw as a rise in juvenile delinquency. Popular magazines of the day carried warnings and advice to parents. James Dean and Sal Mineo played troubled teens in the popular and influential movie. Rebel Without a Cause. The hit Broadway musical West Side Story resurrected Romeo and Juliet as members of warring teenage gangs.

Inspired by the example of several western states including California, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, the Empire State decided to kill two birds with one stone and tackle its forest management problems by sending delinquent youths to CCC-style camps instead of reform school. Legislation in 1955 established "youth rehabilitation facilities" on state forest lands controlled by the Conservation Department.

The first youth rehabilitation camp opened in 1956 on the site of an old CCC camp in Pharsalia in Chenango County. Two years later, a second camp opened in Monterey in Schuyler County. Initial experience with the new camp program was all positive. Instructed by Conservation personnel, the campmen accomplished a great deal of needed work. Neighbors' early doubts were quickly dispelled: there were few walkaways from the camps and property values were not depressed. In 1960, Governor Rockefeller and the Legislature decided to expand the program by raising the age limit for campmen from 21 to 25 and opening two additional camps, one of them at Georgetown.

Camp Georgetown opens

The new camp would be set up on the site of a former CCC camp on the outskirts of the town of Georgetown, in the middle of 98,000 acres of state forest land divided between Madison and Chenango counties (the county line runs right through the Superintendent's office). It is adjacent to Muller Hill, where, according to local lore, the future King Charles X of France, in mortal fear of the long reach of Napoleon, built a secluded hide-away mansion.

Inmates from the Elmira Reformatory vocational masonry class helped to erect three long, one-story concrete-block buildings: an administration building, a bunkhouse with 50 double-beds and a kitchen/mess hall building. On October 3, 1961, the camp received its first 10 inmates, transferred from Elmira. Next spring, the camp reached its capacity of 100 "camp-men" (as camp inmates would be called into the 1970's).

The new campmen constructed a vocational shop building. It was destroyed by fire in 1968 but immediately rebuilt on the same site. Shop inmates manufactured log furniture for internal use and snowshoes and Formica-top conference tables for the Conservation Department. Other additions included a garage and equipment storage sheds. A pole treatment plant (no longer used) and other conservation structures were built on the other side of Crumb Hill Road.

Culture shock: a new correction environment

The pre-camp New York prison system was a maximum-security world. There were only two medium-security institutions (Wallkill and Coxsackie), and community-based work release facilities were more than a decade away. Most inmates in 1961 spent 14 hours or more a day locked in their cells.

Assignment to one of the new camps - New York's first assay at minimum-security programming - could induce culture shock. Georgetown really was a "camp." It did not have the rigid routines, strict restrictions and formality of the traditional prisons. The campmen were called by their first names and treated as individuals. According to a 1961 New York Times Magazine writer, "The word that the visitor hears often from the boys, intones of wonder and reverence, is 'trust.'" Georgetown had no walls, no fences, no barred cells or gates, no marching, no uniformed guards (as they were then called) -no security at all, save for periodic head-counts. The atmosphere was relaxed and relatively free of the tensions, stresses and strains ever-present in the "big houses" of the era.

The comparative freedom permitted an impressive breadth of leisure and recreation programs. The library was stocked with donations from local merchants and church groups and supplemented by the State Education Department's bookmobile. TV and tables for board games were set up in a day room in the bunkhouse. Campmen swam, skated and fished on the small pond behind the bunkhouse. The area in the center of the triangle formed by the three main buildings was blacktopped for basketball, handball, volleyball, badminton, horseshoe tossing, shuffleboard and miniature golf. The field on the hill was leveled for softball and touch football.

Visitors were received in a room in the administration building or, in good weather, on the large picnic field, complete with roofed pavilion, at the front of the camp.

Georgetown was culture shock for Correction Officers as well. Officers assigned to the camps (they applied by writing to Albany and listing their qualifications) turned in their uniforms and wore civilian clothes.

In the early days of the camp program, the Officers were thought of, and sometimes officially referred to, as counselors. Each Officer had a "caseload" of approximately five campmen. He was expected to get to know his campmen, listen to their problems and give advice. He participated in weekly staff meetings during which the campmen's assignments and pay levels were reviewed. He kept a chronological log to check his camp-men's adjustment, and once a month submitted a written progress report to the administrators who, in turn, were responsible for the preparation of reports for use by the Board of Parole. A psychologist trained the Officers in "Fenton Method" group counseling techniques, although the evidence does not indicate that much group counseling actually occurred.

Counseling was not their only non-security responsibility: camp Officers were utility men and might be called on to do almost anything. One Officer was responsible for evening and weekend recreation activities, another for supervising inmate teachers in an evening GED study group. In the absence of a civilian cook, an Officer would take over the kitchen. Officers were responsible for the boiler room and the sewage treatment plant. They were conservation crew chiefs and construction foremen, sometimes drawing plans, buying materials and supervising inmates in building storage sheds and other small structures on the grounds.

Change comes to Georgetown

In 1967, a family of squatters was finally evicted from the corner "lot" they had occupied next to the picnic field on Crumb Hill Road. Otherwise, Camp Georgetown hardly changed at all during its first decade. Starting around 1970, however, the Georgetown program grew and evolved.

In the early 1970's, legislation was enacted authorizing the use of inmate labor on churches, firehouses and other tax-supported or civic non-profit projects, enabling Georgetown to add community service to forestry work. Another major change, later in the decade, raised the upper age limit for camp-men from 25 to 3 5; eventually, age restrictions were removed.

In 1971, for the first time, a camp uniform was issued to Correction Officers. (To the Officers' dismay, the uniform was dark brown, like a UPS driver's suit. In the early 1980's, they switched to system-wide standard grays and recently to blues.)

During these years, counselors and other civilian staff were appointed, reducing the dependence on Officers for the performance of non-security duties.

In 1970, a small gym was built and attached to the rear of the bunkhouse, which served for over a quarter-century until the construction of a larger gymnasium in 1996. In 1971, a small A-frame chapel was built by the campmen under the supervision of the vocational instructor. In 1979, inmates built a QWL log cabin with a kitchen, a lounge, showers, a locker room and several beds for emergency housing (replacing the emergency staff sleeping quarters in the administration building).

DOCS' booming inmate census led to the construction in 1977 of an addition to the bunkhouse, placed like the top of a "T" at the far end. The original bunkhouse was now known as Dorm 1 and the addition as Dorm 2. Nine years later, the garage built by inmates in 1963 was converted to a third housing unit, called Dorm 3. The additional housing units brought Georgetown's capacity to its current 260 inmates.

Also in 1986, a new vocational building was erected and, for the next 10 years, Georgetown offered two vocational programs: cabinet-making and building maintenance. With the retirement of one of the instructors, the cabinet-making shop was closed, and the building was taken over for the quartermaster and draft processing operations. Early this year, building maintenance students, assisted by one of the outside work crews, overhauled the building, adding bathrooms, walls and a new ceiling, painting and plastering, rewiring and installing new pipes. The remodeled building now includes the health services unit (relocated from its former cramped quarters in the administration building) and commissary as well as draft processing; the quartermaster function was removed to a more appropriate location away from inmate housing.

Going into the community: public service programs

Most of Georgetown's 260 inmates work off the grounds in Correction Officer-supervised crews. In a continuation of the 40-year relationship with the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), many are assigned to state forests and parks, where they participate in projects such as thinning trees, "daylighting" (clearing roads and horse trails of overhanging branches), ski trail maintenance and stream improvement. Some are assigned to the Rogers Environmental Education Center in Sherburne.

Other crews are assigned to community service, performing desirable but low-priority public services that otherwise would be neglected for lack of funds. Inmates clear roadsides, paint and refurbish churches, firehouses and cemeteries. Crews work year-round at the New York State Fairgrounds, painting and rehabbing, and are permanently assigned to janitorial service at the Hughes State Office Building in Syracuse. They routinely perform services for the cities of Norwich and Syracuse. For the last five years, inmates have been involved with the Chittenango Landing Canal Boat Museum; they reconstructed the 1820's blacksmith and carpentry shops, dug out and repaired an old canal boat, rebuilt several boat bays, and continue to maintain the museum for public enjoyment.

Alongside volunteers and students, an inmate crew constructed a "creative playground" with swinging bridges, tire nets and tree forts for the Stockbridge Valley Central School. A crew helps maintain the grounds and buildings at SUNY Morrisville. Another crew works with the Madison County Solid Waste and Sanitation Department, sorting recyclables for sale on the market that recoup upwards of $100,000 a year for county taxpayers.

Volunteers in the camp

For four decades, Georgetown has enjoyed an excellent relationship with its neighbors. Whether or not they have directly benefitted from inmate labor, citizens of the surrounding communities have generously offered their services to campmen and camp personnel.

From the time the camp opened, neighbors have assured that the inmates do not feel forgotten during the Christmas season holidays. Committees raise funds for gifts and special dinners with sing-alongs and performances by church choirs.

Volunteers come into the facility on a regular basis to supplement inmate programming. Members of outside AA and NA groups attend the weekly meetings of the inmate chapters. Volunteers from a church in Hamilton serve as literacy tutors. In cooperation with the camp's transitional services program, representatives of Oneida County's credit counseling agency discuss budgeting and small business management with inmates; representatives of Planned Parenthood of Chenango County and the Southern Tier AIDS Program discuss AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, and staff from the Oneida County Conflict Resolution Services office come in to discuss anger management. Many volunteers also conduct religious programs at the camp.

In addition to ongoing volunteer contributions, help is made available in special circumstances. State Fair officials donated paint when Georgetown was preparing for its first accreditation audit. When the new gymnasium was built in 1996, the city of Norwich sent heavy equipment and skilled personnel to grade and pave the area in back for outdoor recreation; SUNY Morrisville donated fitness equipment which was installed for staff use in the old gymnasium. And every year, SUNY Morrisville's horticulture program decorates Georgetown's building fronts and walkways with flowers and shrubbery.

Special attractions

For close to 35 years, Camp Georgetown has cooperated with a local federation of sportsmen's groups by raising pheasant chicks. The federation provides the materials, feed, transportation and veterinary services; Georgetown provides the space and inmate manpower. The pheasant chicks are first placed in weathered wood huts with heat lamps. Gradually, as they gain in size and strength, the chicks sally forth into the attached yard, a chicken-wire cage encompassing perhaps an acre. The wire canopy, supported by poles, is high enough for the birds to practice their takeoffs and landings, and for raspberry and blackberry bushes to grow like a primeval forest. In earlier times, the berries were baked in pies, but the move to tighter nutritional standards ended that practice: the bushes now are shade and dessert for the pheasants.

Last May, the federation delivered 1,750 day-old chicks to Georgetown. To date - despite escape attempts (and foxes outside rooting for them) - 1,600 pheasants have reached adulthood and been released, an impressive survival rate of which the inmate assigned to the program this year is deservedly proud.

Another special attraction is the camp's totem pole, carved by inmate Randy Littlefeather, who suggested that one of the poles from the DEC treatment plant across the road might be expropriated for a camp decoration. He was given a pole and the use of a bay in the garage, where he whittled through the winter of 1983-84, stretching fir boughs across the bay door to block out winter's blasts. The completed pole was placed at the camp entrance on Crumb Hill Road. Next to the "Camp Georgetown" sign, though, the pole seemed to operate as a tourist lure, attracting vacationers who wanted a place to pitch their tent or park their RV for the night; after it was taken down for retreating and repainting a few years ago, it was repositioned up the driveway away from the main road.

The pole, about 12 feet high, has a bear, a turtle, a whale, an owl, a woman's head, snakes slithering up the sides and an eagle with outstretched wings on the top. Curious as to the totemic signification of the carvings, camp officials once thought of asking Native American authorities to examine it, but decided not to. Certifiably "authentic" or not, it is a very good totem pole and can stand on its own merit.

History Index    Home Page