New York state's prisons were overcrowded in the late 1980s. To ease that crowding, the state's Division of Correctional Services began a new approach to shorten the stays in prison for inmates. They began a number of camps across the state with a "shock incarceration" concept. One such camp was placed in Summit, Schoharie County.
Camp Summit had been around since 1961. When it opened and until early 1988, this small minimum-security prison put inmates to work in state forests and parks with a partnership with the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The camp was temporarily closed in February 1988 to prepare for a new kind of experience, what was called shock. Back in the early 1980s, boot camps for criminal offenders became popular in southern states. The idea caught on in New York, and Summit became the second such camp in the state.
The first 43 inmates arrived for their boot camp experience on April 11. Eventually, Summit would have a capacity of 250. Those going through this program had primarily been convicted of non-violent felonies such as drug dealing and theft. The trade-off for the inmates was a rigorous program of militaristic physical and mental discipline for a shorter amount of time in prison.
In addition to being the second shock camp in New York, Summit was the first to go co-ed in September 1988, as the first 15-25 women arrived for the program. The only segregation occurred at night when males and females were housed in separate barracks.
James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Corrections Department at the time, said there would be minimal problems with this situation because in a shock camp, inmates are not allowed to speak "unless spoken to," nor to each other.
Thomas A. Coughlin III, then the Commissioner of New York's Department of Corrections, visited the Summit camp in June 1989.
"It costs about $25,000 a year to keep an inmate in a regular prison setting," Coughlin said. "It costs $12,000 for shock incarceration. The savings are in the shortened stay in prison."
In those early years, the day started at 5:30 a.m. when the guards turned on the lights in the barracks and the drill instructors arrived to lead their platoons to the asphalt yard for calisthenics.
"You should hear them around 4 a.m. talking in their sleep," corrections Officer Warren Hull once told The Daily Star, just before the lights came on in one of the barracks. "One of them was saying, Sir. Yes, sir.'"
"Are you motivated this morning?" a drill instructor yelled at an inmate out in the yard doing pushups.
"Yes, sir," replied the inmate.
After exercises came a mile run and a variety of chants and cadences to stay in step.
Next, flags were hoisted, breakfast was eaten and then the inmates were off to the day's work details. Some did community service projects and some worked in the camp's sawmill.
There were also tutoring sessions for those who wanted to take a GED test, and alcohol and drug counseling sessions.
According to an article from the Department of Correctional Services Today in January 2001, inmates at Summit are immersed in a total experience of focused discipline. In addition to the loud sounds with a message of responsibility and change, the images seen around the camp are in words with mottoes and slogans, some in block letters and others in street graffiti style, such as "Only the best reach the Summit," or "Most people change not only because they see the light but because they feel the heat."
Since shock camps began in 1987 in New York, as of late 2000 almost 24,000 inmates had graduated the program, and evidence showed that the rate of return to custody of shock graduates was lower than the rates of similar inmates who did not go through the program.
This weekend: Skyrocketing food prices and the increasing number of abandoned farms were addressed.
City Historian Mark Simonson's column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com.
His website is
www.oneontahistorian.com.
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