Marcy

Marcy was the third of four correctional facilities to be located in the central New York area. The region formerly was home to three huge institutions for mentally ill and mentally retarded patients. In their heyday in the 1950's, the Utica and Marcy psychiatric centers and the Rome Developmental Center held some 3,000 patients apiece, for a total of 9,000 institutionalized people concentrated in this part of the state. All three of these mammoth old asylums were eventually dismantled during the deinstitutionalization movement which began around 1960 and eventually swept the entire U .S. In ~he late 1950's, the institutional population of the state's psychiatric and mental retardation facilities was almost 100,000.

Over the course of the next two decades, drug therapies improved and cost-effective and humane outpatient alternatives to institutionalization were developed, allowing many of the aging asylums to downsize or close. After deinstitutionalization, what was the state to do with its sprawling old hospitals? Many were converted to correctional use. Starting in the early 1970's, the escalating war on drugs combined with the coming of age of the baby boomers had resulted in a prolonged rise in the population of the state's prisons. DOCS needed beds. Ironically, the replacement of mental patients with prison inmates in the central New York institutions began with the removal of a group of prison inmates to the mental health system. DOCS had once been responsible for its own mentally ill and operated two large state hospitals: Dannemora State Hospital, on the grounds of Clinton, and Matteawan State Hospital, on the grounds of Fishkill, once held nearly 3,000 mentally ill prisoners. As the result of a series of court decisions and in the climate of deinstitutionalization, the state Office of Mental Health (OMH) agreed to take responsibility for these persons. In 1977, OMH opened a forensic unit -the Central New York Psychiatric Center- on the grounds of Marcy Psychiatric Center.

Six years later, in 1983, as the patient population of the Marcy hospital continued to decline, a group of buildings was fenced off as the new Mid-State Correctional Facility. Additional hospital buildings were taken over in 1986, and the full conversion was completed in 1991.

Meanwhile, DOCS was also taking over the former Rome Developmental Center. In January 1988, one half of Rome was converted to Oneida; the other half became the separate Mohawk in October of 1989. And halfway between the opening dates of the prisons in Rome's old buildings, a group of brand new buildings for still another prison was completed in the town of Marcy.

Marcy rushed to completion

When Mid-State opened, it could not have been called Marcy: the postman would not have permitted it, because the psychiatric center of that name still existed, and on the same grounds. But by the time the new prison was opened, the old psychiatric institution had closed. The new prison was named after the town, which like the asylum and the Adirondack peak had been named in honor of William L. Marcy (1786-1857), an Associate Justice of the state Supreme Court, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State and Secretary of War, and three-time Governor of New York.

Construction of Marcy began in December 1987 on a flat, narrow strip of unused state hospital property between the Thruway and Erie Canal to the south and Mid-State across Old River Road to the north. Marcy was ready to receive its first inmates just a year later. The speed with which the institution was erected is owing to a prototype design (popularly called "cookie-cutter") developed by the Department's Division of Facilities Planning and state Office of General Services personnel specifically to enable rapid construction of new prison bed-space to accommodate the skyrocketing prison census. Building to a time-tested prototype shaved years off the lengthy and expensive process of drawing plans from scratch for each prison.

At its opening, the Marcy campus included seven housing units, each walled down the middle to make two military-style barracks with separate entrances, day-rooms and offices. Each of the 14 barracks contained 50 beds in cubicles with chest-high partitions for a capacity of 700 general confinement inmates.

The new facility included an infirmary and a 32-cell disciplinary Special Housing Unit (SHU). Non-residential buildings included a gymnasium, a kitchen and mess hall, a school building for the academic education and vocational training programs, a visitors' building and a greenhouse. These structures were enclosed by two rows of wire perimeter fencing topped with coiled blades of barbed-razor ribbon, reinforced with microwave sensors and an array of cameras. An administration building and other outbuildings were erected outside the fence.

Except for maintenance structures and the S-Block built 10 years later, all the buildings are one-story, red brick with gently sloping white roofs. Vocational horticulture training program inmates have given the campus the flavor of a well-kept and attractively landscaped housing development, with floral arrangements at the entry, around the administration building, at the front of the dormitories and along the walkways.

Capacity expansion

The expansion of the prison population continued relentlessly. DOCS could not keep pace with new commitments, now arriving at the rate of about 400 a month. In the spring of 1989, just a few months after opening, Marcy placed more than 200 beds in the gymnasium; for indoor recreation, an air-supported tent structure called the "bubble" was erected. (Marcy's bubble was the first of many to be placed around the system. It was also the last to come down. It was in regular use for 12 years, but the accumulation of rips and rents eventually took their toll, and it was dismantled last summer.)

The inmates kept coming. In early 1990, DOCS decided it had to expand system capacity by double-bunking. Marcy quickly doubled approximately half the beds in the dormitories, allowing the removal of the cots from the gymnasium while realizing a net gain in capacity. The general confinement population was now 1,068 inmates.

Toward the end of its first year of operation, the northwest comer of the campus was fenced off and contractors began constructing a three building Comprehensive Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment (CASAT) annex, with a program building for classes, meetings and office space, and two housing units with 200 beds. The annex, on the same prototype design as the main campus, took six months to build and received its first inmates in May, 1990.

In January, 1998, Marcy's "S-Block" opened. The S-Block, the first in the state, is one of nine identical SHU's that Governor Pataki approved for placement on the grounds of existing facilities. The S-Block, with 100 large, double-occupancy cells, is on the north side of the main compound's perimeter fence. The S-Blocks were constructed to meet a critical need for maximum-security housing that arose during the Department's expansion years, when nearly all the new facilities built (like Marcy) or acquired from OMH and other agencies (like Mid-State, Oneida and Mohawk), were medium-security prisons. The S-Blocks are a primary cause of the ensuing sharp downturn in assaultive behavior: at last, there was a place to put disruptive inmates.

Inmate programs

Marcy has the full complement of standard DOCS programming. There are academic education classes leading to the GED. Chaplains -supplemented by religious volunteers -minister to the inmates' spiritual needs. A recreation staff organizes and supervises a full schedule of leisure activities, from basketball to chess to movies. The Transitional Services Center runs the orientation program and offers seminars and services in a variety of areas designed to help the released inmate adjust to and succeed in the community. Transitional Services is also responsible for Marcy's Aggression Replacement Training Program, which uses inmate peer counselors to teach techniques of anger management and moral reasoning as viable options to violent behavior. Another program with a similar emphasis is the Managing Anger, Stress and Keeplock, or 1 the "MASK," program. It is conducted by the professional counseling staff and is offered to inmates experiencing disciplinary and other adjustment problems.

Marcy offers two separate alcohol and substance abuse treatment programs, one for general confinement inmates and the CASAT program for annex inmates.

Ten vocational training programs are offered. In addition to assigning inmates to routine "live work" training assignments around the facility, the vocational program is responsible for an impressive array of improvements. The half-mile running track that encircles Marcy's recreation field is an excellent example of interdisciplinary teamwork. Made from 700 tons of crushed stone with a rail fence and sophisticated drainage system, the track was constructed by maintenance staff, officers, and vocational instructors and inmates working together.

Masonry class students built a bocce court on the recreation field last summer. Another improvement was the annex amphitheater built against a hillside by vocational students; the amphitheater is used for staff training and for drug education classes for CASAT inmates. Still another was the outside visiting area, an attractive and pleasant area with a pavilion and picnic tables where inmates can meet with visitors in warm weather.

Horticulture students learn the business "from seeding to selling" in preparation for post-release employment in golf courses and public parks. Live work includes the beautification of the Marcy campus and supplying floral arrangements for official DOCS functions such as the annual Correction on Canvas show and volunteer recognition dinners throughout the Oneida hub. Flowers and landscaping are routinely provided to other public agencies such as nursing homes, battered women's shelters, and Department of Environmental Conservation and Office of Parks, Recreation and Historical Preservation facilities including Delta Lake State Park, Hinckley State Park and Lock 20 on the Erie Canal.

Special programs

Because of its flat terrain and single-story construction, Marcy was selected about a year and a half ago as the site of a unit for physically disabled inmates. B-l and B2 dorms, located near the mess hall and the health services building, were modified for wheelchair accessibility, with larger cubicles, ramped fire exits, wide bathroom stalls, rails in the showers, raised sinks ( so that the knees of a wheelchair-bound inmate can fit underneath) and down-tilted mirrors. An academic teacher regularly conducts classes in the TV rooms, which are fitted out with desks and chairs.

Marcy is the recycling and composting center for the Oneida hub facilities. Marcy was the first prison in the state to have a new drive-through building constructed specifically for recycling operations, and it was one of the first to install a covered composting pad. The recycling center collects approximately 30 tons per month of corrugated cardboard, plastic containers, tin cans, textiles and paper.

Annual cost avoidance from recycling is estimated at nearly $43,000 per year. The composting operation handles tons of food waste annually, avoiding about $110,000 in disposal costs.

Phoenix House CASAT program

When the Prison Omnibus Bill of 1989 authorized the (CASAT) program, it was with the express expectation that treatment services would be contracted out to private treatment providers. But qualified providers are not as plentiful as the bill 's framers thought: only one contract has been awarded, to Phoenix House at Marcy.

Phoenix House was created in 1967 when five recovering drug addicts, fresh out of detox, decided to room together and see if they could help each other to stay drug-free. Out of their association grew a therapeutic community. Over the course of three-plus decades, Phoenix House has standardized its "self-help" techniques and has become the largest substance abuse treatment program in the nation, with programs in New York, California, New Jersey and other countries including the United Kingdom.

Inmate participants in the Marcy Phoenix House program are selected by DOCS; the criteria for selection include a documented history of alcohol or drug abuse; not less than 10 nor more than 24 months to parole eligibility; suitability for placement in a medium-security annex, and approval for temporary release (which precludes violent felony offenders). Selected inmates spend six months at the Marcy annex, then six months in work release status at Phelan Place, a transitional program located in the Bronx and operated by Phoenix House.

The 200 Marcy annex residents use dining, health and recreation facilities on the main compound, but do not intermingle with general confinement inmates. DOCS' academic staff come to the annex to conduct classes, mandatory for Phoenix House inmates who have not attained their GED.

The annex operates as a therapeutic community, subdivided by the 50-man dormitories into smaller and more intimate communities. On arrival, CASAT inmates are assigned to the reception dorm (H -1 ), moving from there in groups through J -1 and J 2 and then back to H-2 for the last phases of the program. Phoenix House is a behavioral modification program, based on the theory that addiction and alcoholism are maladaptive behaviors that can be changed by subjecting the client to a rigorous, peerbased program with clear rules and expectations. Per standard therapeutic community procedures, inmates occupy places on a "hierarchy" of roles and job assignments. New inmates are assigned to low-status menial cleaning jobs and are expected to earn their way up to more responsible and prestigious positions as peer counselors and leaders.

A conspicuous feature of daily community meetings is the organized confrontation session. "The game" is a device by which members of the community methodically and relentlessly set about unmasking and piercing the addict's armory of defiance, passive aggression, "denial" and other self-deluding defenses that act as barriers to recovery.

Boilermakers

In the past few years, Marcy has acquired a reputation as a runners' prison. Its team of 25-30 employee runners has achieved a string of successes in local races and the DOCS Olympics. Marcy first entered the Utica Boilermaker Corporate Cup Road Race in 1993; the Boilermaker is an annual 15K event with an international field of some 10,000 runners.

For three years in a row (1999 through 2001), Marcy's team has captured the cup in the Co-Ed Medium Division (teams representing medium-sized employers). This year, the Marcy team took first place overall in the Little Giant Road Race, a smaller corporate long distance run held annually in Westmoreland.

The Marcy runners took a cache of medals home from the 2001 DOCS Olympics. In the 10K (6.2 miles) run, Senior Counselor Karen Vanderwood took first place overall, Correction Officer Joseph Spina took first place in the Senior Men's Division, Education Supervisor John Mizgala took the silver medal in the Masters Men's Division and Health Services Director Dr. Krishna Vadlamudi won the gold in the Golden Masters Men's Division. q

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