By Alexander Violo
The Press-Republican, Plattsburgh, N.Y.
MALONE, N.Y. — Bare Hill Correctional Facility is set to shutter its doors today (March 11), the latest prison in Franklin County to shut down.
On Nov. 18, 2025, the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision released a press release that said after the department’s review of its facilities, current staffing levels, and the availability of open beds in facilities, it was determined that one correctional facility will be closed: Bare Hill, a medium security facility in Malone, which closed on Wednesday March 11 at the close of business.
Malone Town Supervisor Terrence C. Maguire said he believes the decision to close Bare Hill Correctional Facility was retribution for last year’s wildcat prison strike.
The strike lasted 22 days and led to the firing of more than 2,000 striking officers and the deployment of the National Guard to state prisons across New York.
“It certainly seems and appears to be a retribution for multiple reasons,” Maguire said, “Bare Hill, I think, was one of the first facilities to kind of walk out.”
With three state prisons located near one another, Bare Hill, Franklin and Upstate, Malone was at the center of the strike for over three weeks last year when current and former correction officers, and their supporters, gathered to call for improved safety conditions within state facilities and the repeal of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act.
According to Maguire, Malone’s three state prisons are able to share facilities and resources, adding to his frustration with the decision to close Bare Hill.
“Why Bare Hill? We have honestly a little perfect mini hub here, three facilities that share a range, a garage, the civilians that work at these facilities are sharing information and helping each prison out,” he said, “We have village sewer and water that goes through there. It seems like it would be a perfect mini hub, if you want to call it that, just to leave alone.”
Bare Hill opened in 1988, the second of the three state prisons to open in the town of Malone .
“Malone has traditionally, from the time that Tupper Lake didn’t get Upstate, we have welcomed their facilities,” Maguire said, “We welcomed the first two with open arms and then the third one, Upstate, was supposed to go to Tupper Lake and for whatever reason they couldn’t pull it off and we said we will gladly take it. We have a community full of correction officers, civilian staff and powerhouse guys, a whole team that works here and we are happy to have them.”
Prior to last year’s closure announcement, Bare Hill had 293 staffers.
Incarcerated individuals at Bare Hill were transferred to other medium-security prisons in New York State , according to DOCCS.
Maguire said with three prisons there were local job opportunities for community members.
“We considered them for years to be good jobs. If somebody says I got a job working as a civilian at Bare Hill it’s good for you, that’s great, you don’t have to travel, good for you that’s a great job I’m glad you got in at this facility or that facility,” he said, “Common sense would dictate that you would leave these three correctional facilities alone.”
According to Maguire, when he was in high school the news of Malone getting another prison was a big deal.
“Everybody knew a CO or a civilian that worked in Ogdensburg and Watertown , and now those people could come back, they could come back, build a house and raise a family here and wouldn’t have to drive to Ogdensburg or Watertown, or wherever,” he said.
According to Thomas Mailey, the director of public information at DOCCS, after the closure the department will be keeping Bare Hill, in a state of ready in the event it is needed in the future.
“First and foremost they are not taking anything out of there as far as beds, furnace parts, anything like that,” Maguire said, “They are leaving an administrator there and the entire powerhouse staff plus additional people are going to be there. From what we are being told a month from now if they need to close a facility for an emergency they could move inmates right back in there. They are going to keep it secure as best they can. Heat, lights, and water will be on.”
Maguire said given the history of what happened to facilities after Camp Gabriels and Chateaugay closed there is a concern about what the future for Bare Hill looks like.
“I think this state of ready is a cushion, a pillow to fall on, they did this in Ogdensburg, it was in a state of ready, I think for two years, and then they went in and started shutting lights off,” Maguire said, “It is mind boggling to me because if you have a home and bought a new home you wouldn’t take your old home, shut the power and water off, and try to sell it. You would leave it and say here’s the power, the water is on, it’s in good shape, do you want to buy it.”
Maguire said he is hopeful that Malone’s two remaining prisons will stay open.
“I think there’s always concern but I think the two facilities that we have left standing are strong facilities,” he said, “Upstate is its own thing because it’s maximum security and Franklin has the range and a bunch of programs where I think we are hopefully safe there.”
Maguire said it would have helped to have more lead time about the closure of Bare Hill, adding he thinks a fair process is needed when closures occur.
“I think the whole process needs to be driven by common sense and financial needs,” he said, “We have some big old prisons that I’m sure cost millions to operate every year. We have some other prisons on prime real estate that somebody would gladly purchase tomorrow and we don’t consider closing those.”
Maguire said he thinks politics plays a role in these decisions.
“I think it comes to total votes overall, we don’t have the voting power up here,” he said.
State representatives speak
Daniel G. Stec , R–Queensbury, said in his five plus years in the state senate, the 45th district has gone from 10 to six prisons, with the Clinton Annex, Moriah Shock , Great Meadow and now Bare Hill Correctional Facility closing.
According to Stec, he thinks in three of the last five years language has been included in the executive budget that allows the state to close prisons on a 90-day time frame.
“The governor can always decide to close a prison but without special legislation, the underlying law is 12 months,” Stec he, “Last year she (Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul ) did not ask for the authority, in her budget, I think she asked for it after the strike started, in the 30-day amendments.”
Stec said morale within DOCCS facilities is the result of a lot of factors but closing prisons doesn’t help.
“The question on morale is all of these things the state has done how do they contribute to whether or not our employees feel valued?” he said, “When they point to HALT or a work schedule where they are forced to work 24 or 36 hours straight, right now they have a better schedule but there’s not enough people to work in paid time off or take vacations with scheduled time off. All of these things they feel unheard, unlistened to and unvalued. Any employee is concerned about safety in their workplace and these guys have been complaining about it and heck they went on a strike for three weeks last year and I think they would say they don’t think anything was significantly addressed.”
According to Stec, before last year’s strike there were over 14,000 DOCCS employees and now the number is more than 11,000.
“They are 20% down and they aren’t replacing them,” he said, “I think morale is poor and the uncertainty of whether they are going to close the prison where they live and whether people are going to have to move their families certainly isn’t helping.”
According to Stec, it is his understanding that Bare Hill will remain in a state of ready after it closes on Wednesday.
“I like a lot of people don’t know exactly what that means,” he said, “I think in the short term it means a couple of things, they are going to keep the heat on and they are going to keep an eye on it while they try to figure out what they’re going to do with it. I really don’t think they have a plan yet moving forward.”
Stec said it’s his understanding that some of the infrastructure at Bare Hill is connected to the two other nearby prisons on Bare Hill and Brand roads, in the town of Malone.
“I think if they say state of readiness I think that’s code for we can’t totally turn it off because we are still using parts of it,” he said.
Stec said he is worried about the future of Bare Hill if the facility sits idle.
“I think the community is wise to be too,” he said, “They are looking at their own experience. People that live in Malone are painfully aware of what’s going on at Gabriels . The potential for this to become a blighted property, an unkempt property, an eye-sore, and an environmental hazard is very real. The state has a poor track record, as a property owner, of being a steward over closed prisons. They have been a very poor steward over the years.”
According to Stec, he believes if a private industry behaved in this manner and walked away from facilities they would be held accountable.
“The State of New York would be dragging them in with subpoenas and hearings, and fines, they wouldn’t tolerate that,” he said, “But yet that is the state’s track record with closed prisons everywhere not just in the Adirondacks. You got Lyon Mountain and Chateaugay , I know the one’s in my senate district but there are other ones too.”
Stec said in the event of future prisons closures he would like to see the process change in the future.
“They shouldn’t close a prison without doing one of two things, when they announce a closure they should say this is the plan for it, they should have a spelled out game plane, and if they don’t then they should say what they’ve allocated for its demolition to put it back into a state where it can be reused for something else,” Stec said, “They should either budget money to demolish it or put it on the market to develop it for something else. The plan cannot be we will just walk away from it and let it fall into ground.”
Assemblyman Michael S. Cashman, D–Plattsburgh, said he believes prison closures should go through the legislature.
“It shouldn’t be based on an executive decision alone,” Cashman said, “I certainly feel as though the North Country has bore the brunt of the prison closures of which I didn’t support in the first place.”
Cashman said it is his understanding that Bare Hill will remain in a state of ready after its closure.
“That’s how it has been described, certainly we will be watching that unfold,” he said.
According to Cashman, if prison closures are proposed in the future he will be opposed to them.
“The North Country has had the brunt and burden of this. It should be going thorough the legislative process and I certainly will be unabashed in my position to advocate for folks here in the district,” he said, adding that prisons that have closed need to be repurposed.
“Sadly these properties have closed but they should be repurposed,” Cashman said, “We have a housing crisis in the North Country, I have long advocated for Camp Gabriels, for example, to be be repurposed for a work force housing program.”
DOCCS
Mailey said the 293 DOCCS staff assigned to Bare Hill, prior to the closure, will be offered positions at other facilities.
With over 650 vacant staff positions available in correctional facilities across Franklin , Clinton and Essex counties DOCCS will be able to ensure no staff are laid off, mitigating the impact on both staff, their families and the community, according to Mailey.
Responding to a question on how the placement process worked for employees at Bare Hill, Mailey said from the date the closure was announced, in November 2025 , staff continued to voluntarily reassign out of Bare Hill Correctional Facility in accordance with the various negotiated reassignment policies.
Remaining employees impacted by the closure were then provided an opportunity to be placed in available funded vacancies based on their elected locations they were willing to work, in accordance with the state’s Civil Service guidelines for reduction-in-force, according to Mailey.
Andrea M. Dumas, mayor of the village of Malone, said with the closure of Bare Hill incarcerated individuals are being moved to other facilities where safety is still a concern.
“The unfortunate thing is they are closing a prison and they aren’t fixing one of the bigger things that everyone is concerned about, safety,” Dumas said, “Now we are putting more individuals into facilities that are manned with National Guard but they don’t have the training that correction officers have. That’s a big concern.”
Dumas said there are still a lot of unanswered questions in the community.
“We haven’t heard anything from anybody from DOCCS since the day they called us to tell us they were closing on March 11,” she said, “The only thing we are hearing now are comments from the community, scuttlebutt from the community, we haven’t heard anything more from anybody that’s an actual representative of Albany.”
Dumas said there are concerns about what is going to happen to village water and sewer rates after the closure.
“We opened our community up to three prisons, we upgraded our sewer and water plants because of the amount of usage we’ve had over the years,” she said, “Those were unfunded state mandates and whose back is that going to be put on, the local taxpayer.”
According to Dumas, she is concerned about the future of Bare Hill if the facility sits idle.
“I’m extremely concerned, we have been working for years, with Betty Little, Senator Stec, Billy Jones, they have been working for years, Janet Duprey too, they worked for years on Camp Gabriels and if you drive by Chateaugay it’s heartbreaking,” Dumas said, “Camp Gabriels is completely a loss they need to go in there and demo it down, sell the property but you could save Chateaugay for some type of use. I hope to god they don’t allow this to happen in our community. Anybody who has a prison in their community has opened their communities up to this and the state should be held to the same level as every other taxpayer.”
New York has closed more than two dozen prisons since 2009, when former Gov. David Patterson closed Camp Gabriels a move that was followed by the closure of several other North Country prisons including prisons in Chateaugay, Lyon Mountain , Ogdensburg and Watertown.
More recently, Moriah Shock Great Meadow Correctional Facility , in Washington County, was closed in 2022 and 2024 respectively.
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