Hudson
The state prison in Hudson is an old institution in a
very old city. In 1606, Henry Hudson landed here, 115 miles
north of Manhattan on the east bank of the river named after
him. "The lands are pleasant with Grasse and Flowers," reads an
entry in the Half-Moon's log, "and goodly Trees as every we have
seene, and very sweet smells come from them."
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The sweet smell of clover suggested the name Claverack
(Clover Reach) to the first settlers, but it would later be
called Hudson. Commercial development began shortly after the
Revolutionary War, when merchants from New Bedford and Nantucket
purchased land and laid out streets. In 1785, Hudson became the
third city to be incorporated in the state of New York.
Once a flourishing whaling port and shipbuilding center,
later known for brick manufacture, Hudson's economy now depends
on antique shops, tourism, agriculture and a penal institution
which employs about 270 people. Located within the city limits
about a mile above the river, it is just a stone's throw from the
old, gray stone St. Mary's Church, the majestic Columbia County
Courthouse and newer one-story industrial buildings where some of
the prison's work release inmates are employed.
But Hudson is no monolithic urban prison, overwhelming
the community like a Clinton or an Auburn. Rather, it presents
itself almost as a park. Most of the facility's 162 acres are
lush green with groves and meadows, with the institution
buildings confined to the center of the property. From the inside
out, the city and the river are practically invisible, while city
residents would likewise have to peer hard to detect the prison
in their midst.
The prison grounds slope gently toward the river, from
the1950's cottages in the Upper Yard down to the Old Chapel,
constructed in the 1890's. Its tower has long been one of the
area's distinguishing landmarks. The facility presents a campus-
like appearance, with tree-lined walkways and colorful flower
beds. White-trimmed two- and three-story brick structures are
grouped around lawn areas, where inmates of old marched in
military formation.
Like its home city, the prison has had a long and varied
history.
Hudson opened in 1887 as a "house of refuge," or
reformatory, for young women serving time for petty misdemeanors.
From 1904 to 1975, it was part of the juvenile justice system,
housing girls aged 12-15. Then, in 1976, the Hudson institution
experienced its last and most radical change: from female to male
inmates, from youths to adults of all ages, and from minor to
felony offenders.
The Era of Reform
Reform was in the air in sentimental 19th Century America.
Here in New York, slavery was eliminated by the late
1820's. New York's first try at a caring, benevolent approach to
the problem of juvenile delinquency was the establishment in 1824
of a privately-funded "house of refuge" on Randall's Island in
the East River. In the same year, the Legislature required each
county to erect and operate a poorhouse for paupers and other
dependents. In the 1840's, Dorothea Dix shamed legislatures in
state after state into improving conditions for the care of the
insane. This was generally accomplished through erecting state
asylums, which were a great advance over the poorhouses, jails
and locked attics in which they were previously confined. New
York established its first insane asylum in Utica in 1843.
The new humanitarian attitude even extended to adults in
prisons. News reached America in the 1850's of interesting
experiments in Ireland and Australia, where prisoners
earned "marks" for good behavior. That led to extra privileges,
reduced restraints and early release.
Inspired by reports of success abroad, progressive
American prison administrators convened in Cincinnati in 1870 at
the first Congress of Correction. Hosted by Ohio Governor
Rutherford B. Hayes, the Congress resulted in the adoption of a
liberal Declaration of Principles. The credo embraced reformation
as the goal of imprisonment, classification of offenders for
individualized treatment, the indefinite or indeterminate
sentence whose duration would be measured not by mere time but by
reformation, and parole.
In 1869, New York -- anticipating an increase in the
prison census as soldiers returned from the Civil War --
authorized the construction of a fourth state prison (joining
Auburn, Sing Sing and Clinton). The new institution, however,
would be reserved for younger offenders aged 16 to 30 and would
be called a "reformatory," not a prison. Opening in 1876, the
Elmira Reformatory would be administered not by prison
authorities but by a board of managers reporting to the state
Board of Charities. Elmira's first superintendent -- not warden --
was Zebulon Brockway, a renowned prison administrator and one of
the drafters of the Cincinnati Principles.
House of Refuge for Women
With the rapidly spreading fame of Elmira, a clamor arose
for the creation of a similarly enlightened institution for
female offenders. A the time, in the 1880's, New York operated no
institution whatsoever for state-sentenced women. These female
offenders were instead "farmed out" at per annum rates to county
jails where their welfare and reformation were generally ignored.
Simultaneously, a panic was overtaking otherwise rational
reformers. They had become possessed by the notion that
hereditary "feeblemindedness" was the cause of almost every
social ill.
The future of the nation was at stake: something had to be
done to lock up feebleminded women and stop them from breeding
more criminals, paupers and beggars, lunatics and bolsheviks.
The movement - progressive in its aim to provide women
with the opportunity for reform in a humane environment, and
retrogressive in its fixation with ridding the state of a
supposedly hereditary underclass was spearheaded by Josephine
Shaw Lowell. In 1881, Lowell - the first woman commissioner of
the New York State Board of Charities - persuaded Governor
Alonzo B. Cornell to call for a women's reformatory. The
Legislature appropriated $100,000 for a "house of refuge" (the
name was borrowed from the juvenile sphere), but nothing else
happened and the appropriation disappeared. In 1884, another
bill resulted in the purchase of 40 acres on a bluff overlooking
the city of Hudson and the Hudson River.
In May, 1887, 11 years after the opening of Elmira, the
House of Refuge for Women at Hudson received its first 49
inmates by transfer from the Randall's Island house of Refuge.
They were aged, like Elmira's inmates, from 15 to 30 and were
sentenced to five-year indeterminate terms (shortened in 1899 to
three years).
Unlike Elmira, however, Hudson received no felons.
Young women were sent to Hudson with convictions for petit
larceny, "habitual drunkenness," of being "common prostitutes,"
and frequenting "disorderly houses." They were sentenced from
all parts of the state except New York and Kings counties.
The grounds of the House of Refuge were enclosed by a
high board fence. The largest building - frankly called
the “prison building" - contained 96 cells and was used for
reception (usually two months) and punishment. There were also
four "cottages," each with 26 individual rooms, a kitchen and
dining area. The cottages were "fitted up as nearly as possible
like an average family home, for the purpose of teaching the
inmates all manner of domestic work." The "main building"
contained officers' rooms, work and school rooms and 25 rooms
for inmates in the last stages of preparation for parole. There
was also a wooden hospital building (all other construction was
brick) with 24 individual rooms. Total capacity was 249.
In addition to domestic duties in the cottages, the
House of Refuge offered “industrial classes" in sewing, cooking
and laundry. All girls attended academic classes. "Physical
culture" classes were conducted daily, and singing classes three
days a week.
Matrons were expected to set an example of proper and
ladylike deportment for their charges. Suitable role models were
not always easy to find. Complaining in 1900 that the candidates
on the civil service lists "are not of a satisfactory class,"
the board of managers questioned whether "the kind of woman that
we wish to secure" would see the notices in the post office, the
usual place where examination notices were posted. They asked
the Department of Civil Service to consider advertising in the
country papers or in the religious weeklies.'' To respectable
women, apparently, the post office was to be shunned.
It was necessary to impose discipline from without.
Good behavior marks -- which could earn better cottage
assignments and parole -- were forfeited for misbehavior ranging
from escape and fighting to pouting, loud talking and "failure
to comply with the spirit of the rules."
Harsher measures were also available. From Hudson's
opening, the dark cell, restricted diet and handcuffs were “in
vogue" (in the startlingly flip phrase of the first
superintendent). By the 1890's, inmates were indulging in the
practice of “smashing out" trashing their rooms and cells and
screaming all night long. To counter this “license amounting to
liberty," officials confined inmates in attics, in a storeroom
and in dungeon basement cells. Solid iron plates covered the
windows, and inmates were often uncomfortably cuffed to the wall
or door. Inmates were also subject to the strap and the cold
shower bath.
New York State Training School for Girls
In 1904, Hudson passed out of the adult
correctional system. Not for lack of inmates: despite the
opening of women's reformatories in Albion (1893) and Bedford
Hills (1901), the Hudson institution was usually overcrowded.
The state had determined, however, that a higher priority was an
institution for female juvenile delinquents, until then confined
with boys in either Randall's Island or the State Industrial
School in Rochester. The House of Refuge for Women was renamed
the State Training School for Girls and placed under the
auspices of the state Department of Social Services. Thirty-one
years later, it was transferred to the state Education
Department and then, in 1971, to the Division for Youth (DFY).
Gradually, the Training School's population increased,
reaching a high of about 500 girls aged 11 to 15. Additional
property was acquired and additional cottages were constructed.
Many of the original small cottages were demolished and replaced
with larger buildings in the 1920's and '30's. The board fence
also was torn down.
Many of the girls were received for the same offenses
as their predecessors from the House of Refuge days petty theft,
prostitution and drunkenness. To these were added "status
offenses" - acts that were criminal only by virtue of the girl's
status as a minor. These included "wilful disobedience to
parents," "frequenting the company of thieves," "being in
concert saloons, dance-houses, theatres or places where liquor
sold or served," and "collecting cigar stumps, bones or refuse
for market and peddling."
After conversion to a juvenile institution, education
was given greater emphasis. Over the years, the former work
programs disguised as “industrial classes" were supplemented
with vocational courses in typing and shorthand, home nursing,
waitressing and beauty culture. For many years, an incentive to
good behavior was “going to the dance" with boys from local
public and private institutions.
In 1973, two years after assuming control of the
Training School, DFY announced that the physical plant was
falling apart and there was no money to rebuild. They also
argued that the girls would receive better care in smaller, more
modern facilities. Fearing loss of jobs, local citizens waged a
prolonged and vociferous campaign to keep the DFY facility open.
But it closed in 1975.
Hudson Correctional Facility
The jobs were not gone long. On October 14, 1976,
the facility reopened, now under the jurisdiction of the
Department of Correctional Services, the state's adult
correctional system. At first, only three cottages (as they are
still called) were usable, and the minimum-security Hudson
Correctional Facility had a capacity of 120 inmates. The state
immediately began refurbishing other buildings. Three more
cottages were ready in December, 1978, providing beds for
another 60 inmates. Further renovations added 60 more beds in
1981, doubling the capacity to 240.
Later in 1981, the Old Chapel was readied for
occupancy. The chapel, built in the 1890's, is the oldest
usable building on the grounds. Located just outside the fence,
60 work release inmates are housed in the chapel -- still with
stained glass windows, massive beams and arches, ornate
radiator covers, ancient chandeliers and slanting, creaking
floors. Preparation of still more housing areas continued -- in
cottages, basements and in the former hospital building.
Inmates are issued keys to their rooms, some of which
are single and some mini-dorms with up to 10 beds. Current
capacity is now 515 medium-security beds inside the fence plus
the 60 minimum- security beds in the old chapel, for a total of
575. (About 50 more inmates are on Hudson's count but are never
at the institution. These inmates are either day reporters or
participants in the Altamont House Residential Treatment
Program.)
Nearly all the buildings were constructed between
1908 and 1952. An addition to the current administration
building was built in 1956 and contains offices, classrooms and
the libraries. The new multi-faith chapel, built by inmates with
donated materials, was dedicated in 1989. Ground was broken this
year for a new work release building with offices as well as an
inmate housing area.
There are several structures on the grounds which are
not usable. They include the Plumb-Bronson house, built around
1810 and remodeled in 1839 by the renowned architect Alexander
Jackson Davis. The Plumb-Bronson house, with a beautiful spiral
staircase winding up to the third floor, was used as the
superintendent's residence until 1972, but has been crumbling in
disuse ever since. Citizen groups are currently seeking funding
to restore and preserve the house as a valuable example of the
Hudson Valley's architectural riches.
Hudson's inmates spend their days much as other
medium-security inmates around the state. They perform necessary
work such as maintenance of the institution and food preparation
and service. There are academic classes leading to high school
equivalency and vocational courses in small engine repair,
horticulture, barber and beauty culture, and janitorial
services. There is an ASAT (Alcohol and Substance Abuse
Treatment) program and a Veterans Substance Abuse Treatment
Program administered in conjunction with the Albany Veterans
Administration office. There are also volunteer-led programs, a
cognitive self-change program, prerelease programs and organized
recreation programs.
Outside-cleared inmates, housed in F and G cottages,
work regularly under Correction Officer supervision at the
State Office Campus and at the cafeteria of the Department's
Training Academy in Albany. They are also assigned to the
Rockefeller Plaza, the huge state office complex in downtown
Albany, where they report after the state employees have gone
home for the day to clean state offices and process the
complex's recyclables. Inmates also travel at least twice a
week to a regional food bank in Albany, where they sort and
package donated food for distribution to the needy throughout
upstate New York.
As called upon, Hudson also makes its inmates
available to the city and surrounding communities for disaster
assistance and special clean-up and repair services.
Article is from DOCS TODAY October 1999
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