Greene

     When the first inmates arrived at Greene in October of 1984, suffice it to say they were very surprised. What they encountered was a much different prison setting than they had anticipated or one to which they had been accustomed.

     Iron bars, for the most part, had been replaced by sturdy metal screening. Dormitory-style spacious living quarters, with an individual cubicle for each inmate, had replaced the familiar barred cell that was the staple elsewhere in the prison system. All of the buildings were separated from one another on a sprawling, wide-open campus. Greene's inmates are able to walk to these building for meals, academic programs and other work and program assignments in open, fresh air, not through a long confining corridor that is filled with barred windows.

     Many other differences give this prototype prison, commonly known as a "cookie cutter," a more campus-like setting without the noisy bursts of activities at many of the older and larger prisons throughout New York state.

     Greene, some 30 miles south of Albany, is located in the town of Coxsackie in Greene County. It includes a medium-security component for males 16 years of age and older, and has a total of 1,621 general confinement beds available for this purpose.

     Greene also features a free standing, 100-bed double- occupancy S-block. This is a maximum-security unit that is used to segregate from the general population those disruptive inmates who assault staff and others and disobey prison rules.

     Greene's staff also manages a l0-bed secure unit at Albany Medical Center.

     Greene's two-story S-block opened on May 7, 1998. It is one of nine such maximum-security units located on the grounds of medium-security facilities throughout the state. These units have provided the Department with the welcomed safety option of being able to segregate up to 1,800 disruptive inmates at any given time.

     And inmates seem to have gotten the message throughout the state with regard to these new S-blocks.

     For instance, the overall number of inmate-on-staff assaults last year, 683, was the fewest in 20 years and the overall rate of inmate-on-staff assaults in 2001, 10 per 1,000 inmates, was the same as in 2000 and also the lowest in 20 years. The overall rate of inmate-on-inmate assaults in 2001, 12 per 1,000 inmates, also was the lowest in 20 years, and the overall number of inmate-on-inmate assaults in 2001, 843, was the fewest in 13 years.

     As the numbers clearly show, the new S-blocks at Greene and elsewhere have been doing what they were designed to do: provide a safer prison environment for staff and others.

More like a young college campus than prison setting

     The Greene compound is indeed a large one, and one which can easily chill the bones on a windy winter's day, when the frigid air blows off the nearby Hudson River and swarms around the vast open grounds.

     There are a total of 36 buildings spread across the grounds of Greene. Besides barracks-style housing for about 1,600 men, there is a 15-cell Special Housing Unit, a 100 double-cell S- Block. The medical unit includes an eight-bed infirmary with two isolation cells.

     Greene also features a maintenance building, a commissary and laundry and a building where inmates can hone their horticulture skills. Inmates at Greene also tend to a farm that once was cared for by inmates at neighboring Coxsackie, a maximum-security state prison.

     Greene's inmate population is young and diverse. A snapshot of the population taken last year showed inmates from Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, South America, Africa and Europe.

     As of earlier this year, the staff at Greene totaled 688. That includes 485 security professionals, 107 program staff and 96 support and health services employees.

     The mission of the facility is to pro- vide a safe, fair and humane environment with an emphasis on programming that encourages self-motivation, self-discipline and personal responsibility for the inmate.

     Couple that with the fact that Greene Teacher Elizab Greene's inmates are among the youngest in the system and that many lack basic education and vocational skills and have special needs and it's no wonder that programming is high -very high -on the Greene agenda.

Always an eye on innovative programming

     Greene's academic program consists of 26 teachers with an average enrollment of 16 students per program module. Four modules are offered daily: in the morning, afternoon, early evening and late evening. Each module is three hours in length resulting in 12 hours of daily student contact. The scope of the program accommodates students at all levels.

     Students at Greene are prepared to take and pass the GED exam and now are required to attain at least the ninth-grade level in reading and math skills. Previously, inmates throughout the system only had to reach the eighth-grade level in reading and math skills to take the GED. Approximately 150 Greene students are tested three times annually for their GED, and the passing rate has been very good -over 90 percent.

     With its heavy emphasis on education and its youthful and energetic population -many of whom had no marketable work skills whatsoever when they entered the prison system- it's no wonder that Greene has been the site of a number of novel and innovative initiatives over the past 18 years.

     In December of 1984, only two months after Greene received the first of its 500 inmates, the facility took over the daily operation of the farm that had been worked by inmates from its neighboring facility, Coxsackie. Inmates continue to tend to the farm today, which now goes by the name of the Greene Farm.

     The following month, construction got underway on two additional dormitory buildings to house additional inmates. That frenzied construction was completed in a mere three months, increasing the capacity of the facility by 200.

     That subsequent construction and expansion brought the in- mate population to 700- some 1,100 inmates less than its capacity today. After that burst of activity early in its history, things settled down at Greene for about a year.

     But then the inevitable occurred: many more medium- security inmates were entering the prison system at a furious pace as a result of the "crack" epidemic beginning in the 1980 's. That meant the need for more construction, and additional dorms were quickly added over a short period of time.

     More construction in Greene's early days, coupled with the arrival of more and more inmates, meant some- thing else: the need for more activities to occupy the inmate population and enhance security for staff and others.

Being a good neighbor in the community

     So it was in April of 1986 that inmates at Greene began to embark on a new mission: community service work, a worthy and welcomed initiative that continues today.

     Each year, supervised community service crews from Greene work in communities throughout the Greene County area completing needed projects on behalf of municipal leaders and not- for-profit agencies. In 2001, Greene staff and inmates spent almost 13,000 hours working in the community: staff logged 2,700 hours and inmates worked 9,794.

     The community service work is varied, depending on need. It could entail repairs to senior centers and Little League fields, cleanups of cemeteries and area roadways, painting churches or helping residents dig out from natural disasters like ice storms, floods or snowstorms. As a result of these ongoing efforts, hundreds of needed community projects that might not otherwise be undertaken because of local fiscal constraints are accomplished through the efforts of staff and inmates.

     Greene's crews have played an integral part in the community over the years. For instance, in 1997, they harvested over 16,000 pounds of potatoes that were donated by an area farmer. The surplus then was donated to food pantries in Greene, Columbia and Albany counties for distribution to the needy. And in the summer of 1997, Greene community service crew inmates participated in the restoration of the Hudson River lighthouse in nearby Athens.

     In addition to the community service crews, Greene has provided a crew to Corcraft since 1999 to work on cleaning the New York State Thruway between Saugerties and Albany.

     At the same time Greene inmates began working for a thriving local community way back when, they were able to keep in shape and let off some steam in a new way: by boxing one an- other in the ring. It was in 1986 that a boxing program was initiated under the direction of local resident Kevin Rooney, who at the time was the trainer for heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, a now-convicted rapist who hails from nearby Catskill.

     The boxing program was highly successful for a number of years, but it no longer is in existence at Greene.

A changed Greene in the new millennium

     Today indeed marks a different era. The facility offers a full and, as previously mentioned, innovative range of academic education, vocational training, volunteer services programs, an Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment (ASAT) residential program, Aggression Replacement Training (ART) and transitional services.

     Greene also is designated as an under-21-years-of-age facility, and these inmates are offered full range Chapter I and Special Education Services programs.

     Additionally, all of Greene's general confinement inmates participate in a structured housing unit program referred to as Community Lifestyles. This unique and innovative program is designed to make all of Greene 's inmates accountable not only as a community but as individuals as well.

     Greene and Washington are the only two facilities in the state that offer a Title I Program. This is a federally funded remedial program for inmates under the age of 21 that provides instruction in basic education skills to supplement the inmate's regular Adult Basic Education (ABE), GED or occupational training program.

     The accompanying Title I Vocational and Career Counseling Program provides individual and/or small group exploration into the world of work. Interest and skill assessments are conducted to guide inmates in developing career and vocational plans for the post-release period.

     The curriculum for each component of the program is consistent with the skills and objectives required in the state academic and vocational programs that it supplements. The instructional activities in which the student engages varies according to the component.

     Greene is one of 15 facilities in the state which offers a Special Education Program. This initiative provides intensive one- on- one and small group instruction to inmates who are under the age of 21 and have been identitied as having a learning disability. Instruction may be provided in a self-contained special education class or the student may be assigned to a resource room for part of the instruction time.

     The goal of the program is to tailor learning activities to the diagnosed needs of the students with a disability to enable them to achieve learning objectives and, where appropriate, to successfully participate in the regular academic program.

     Because of its supplemental nature, the Special Education Program utilizes the curriculum provided in the student's regular academic program and Individualized Education Plan (IEP) developed by the Committee of Special Education.

     Greene is also the site of one of the Department's newer programming initiatives, the SHU Project (Mid-State also runs the SHU Project at its S-Block). This innovative pretreatment demonstration program is designed to help those inmates in disciplinary housing status make positive choices and positive treatment recovery decisions. The program provides incentives for the largest population to participate in a series of drug awareness treatment interventions. The target population are "hard-core" drug users, who continue to use and traffic drugs while incarcerated.

     The SHU Project complements the Department's existing random drug testing program. The program requires selected inmates to complete a 90 to 120 day pretreatment workbook while they are in SHU status. Upon leaving SHU the inmate is expected to actively participate and complete a Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) Program. He must also remain drug free.

     There's a big incentive to participate in this program: reinstatement of good time on the misbehavior report that led to SHU time.

     The program also provides some ancillary benefits. For instance, it assists SHU staff in managing the long-term drug offending inmate. Also, it's hoped this initiative will provide the Department with research to determine the effectiveness of pretreatment intervention.

     Greene also operates a highly-successful Youth Assistance Program (YAP), whereby in- mates address at-risk youths from the community to give them the facts about life in prison and hopefully steer them away from a life of drugs and crime. Due to the youthful inmate population, which can easily relate to the young at-risk youths that frequently visit the facility, Greene's YAP program is one of the more popular ones in the system.

     Early this February, for instance, Superintendent Joseph David fielded a call from school officials in the Bronx, who wanted to bring a busload of at-risk youths to Greene to meet with the inmates.

     "I told them that there were other facilities much closer to them downstate that have the program," Superintendent David recalled. "But they said to me, ' We've heard a lot about your program. We think it's the best. We want to come there. ' "

     The group made the long trek from the Bronx to Greene County shortly thereafter; they were not disappointed.

     ' Greene also offers occupational training in air conditioning repair, commercial arts, computer repair, custodial maintenance, drafting and blueprint reading, electrical trades, horticulture, masonry, print shop and small engine repair.

Concern, kudos from the outside

     Department staff are not the only people that interact with young Greene inmates in an effort to help them get their lives in order and succeed on the outside. More than 155 registered community volunteers provide a variety of programs -pre-release services, family services, educational tutoring, future employment assistance, religion, drama, art and a host of athletic events.

     Through the ongoing efforts of these dedicated volunteers, inmates are stimulated to accept and participate in a variety of programs and services designed to ensure they can be law-abiding members of the community upon their release from prison. Contact with the community at large also enables the inmates to learn new and constructive ways of utilizing their time. It also offers them an opportunity to gain a better perspective on their ultimate role in society.

     Every year, staff and inmates at Greene participate in the annual Make a Difference Day activities that benefit the needy in the local community. In 2001, employees at Greene and Coxsackie, fueled with a $500 donation from the Inmate Liaison Committee, participated in the American Cancer Society's annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk. They raised $2,605 for that cause, and also donated $1,500 to the Coxsackie Rescue Squad. Additionally, Greene inmates printed brochures for a local church, reupholstered area church and temple pews and helped renovate the Hope 7 Community Center in Troy.

     Like all other facilities in the state, Greene is accredited by the American Correctional Association (ACA) and, thus, is subject to reaccreditation every three years to ensure continued compliance with rigid ACA standards. The standards are designed to ensure that the facility is being run in a safe and efficient manner on a everyday basis. Auditors also look at a variety of other disciplines, including health care, food service, safety and training issues, living environment, programs and the like.

     During their most recent visit to the facility from May 26-28, 1999, auditors were particularly impressed with what they witnessed. They had some especially high praise for the conditions of confinement at the large medium-security facility and related quality of life issues.

     In its final 1999 report that led to Greene's reaccreditation for another three years, ACA auditors opined:

     "During the tour and throughout the audit period, the team reviewed conditions relating to the conditions of confinement and the quality of life checklist and found the overall condition of the facility to be excellent.

     "The facility was very clean and well-managed. The maintenance department does a good job in the upkeep of the buildings. Staff and inmate interaction was very good."

     Greene is subject to another reaccreditation review this year. And, based on its ongoing track record of compliance, facility officials aren't expecting many problems.

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