Arthur Kill Correctional Facility was a medium security

correctional facility In criminal justice, particularly in North America, correction, corrections, and correctional, are umbrella terms describing a variety of functions typically carried out by government agencies, and involving the punishment, treatment, and su ...

Arthur Kill Road Arthur Kill Road is a major northeast-southwest artery along the South- West Shore of the New York City borough of Staten Island. It is long, and runs through the neighborhoods of Tottenville, Richmond Valley, Charleston, Rossville, Woodrow ...

Charleston Charleston most commonly refers to: * Charleston, South Carolina * Charleston, West Virginia, the state capital * Charleston (dance) Charleston may also refer to: Places Australia * Charleston, South Australia Canada * Charleston, Newfoundlan ...

Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull an ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It operated from 1976 to 2011, run by what was then the

New York State Department of Correctional Services New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...

. The prison had a capacity of 931 male inmates. The prison property bordered

Arthur Kill The Arthur Kill (sometimes referred to as the Staten Island Sound) is a tidal strait between Staten Island (also known as Richmond County), New York and Union and Middlesex counties, New Jersey. It is a major navigational channel of the Port of ...

, a waterway that separates Staten Island from

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. The

Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve is state park located near the southwestern shore of Staten Island, New York. It is the only state park located on Staten Island. History The park was the site of extensive mining of white kaolin clay in th ...

is located just south of the prison site. Part of its site contains buried truck trailers and is potentially contaminated; the decision was made to "deal" with the abandoned trailers' contents in this way.

History

Opened in 1976, the site formerly served as a 650-bed

drug rehabilitation Drug rehabilitation is the process of medical or psychotherapeutic treatment for dependency on psychoactive substances such as alcohol, prescription drugs, and street drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, heroin or amphetamines. The general inte ...

center, with an indoor swimming pool (closed when it became a prison); the housing of that unit was destroyed by fire. Sixteen housing (dormitory) units, the medical building, and the SHU or Special Housing Unit were built just before or while it was a prison. In the summer of 2006, the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility was used to shoot scenes for the juvenile detention center shown in the film '' Tenderness''. Arthur Kill housed a call center of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. They answered questions about regulations, but had no access to the Department's databases. When the prison closed it was to be moved to Greene. The facility was closed in 2011 as part of Governor

Andrew Cuomo Andrew Mark Cuomo ( ; ; born December 6, 1957) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 56th governor of New York from 2011 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected to the same position that his father, Mario Cuo ...

's prison closing program. At the time, the prison had 408 employees, including 315 security employees.Annese John and Tom Wrobleski.
N.Y. Gov. Cuomo orders Staten Island's Arthur Kill Correctional Facility closed
. ''

Staten Island Advance The ''Staten Island Advance'' is a daily newspaper published in the borough of Staten Island in New York City. The only daily newspaper published in the borough, and the only major daily paper focused on a borough, it covers news of local and ...

''. Friday July 1, 2011. Retrieved on September 19, 2012. Because of dropping prison population, due to revised sentencing guidelines, some prisons were to be closed. Upstate lawmakers were adamant that it should not be just upstate prisons. The other prisons closed in 2011— Buffalo, Fulton, Mid-Orange, Mt. McGregor, Oneida, and Summit—were all upstate. Following the prison's closure, Broadway Stages, which already operated sound stages elsewhere in the city, negotiated with New York State to purchase the prison property for use in films and productions needing "real" prison experiences. In May 2017, Broadway Stages announced it was filming the upcoming ''

Ocean's 8 ''Ocean's Eight'' (stylized onscreen as ''Ocean's 8'') is a 2018 American heist action thriller comedy film directed by Gary Ross and written by Ross and Olivia Milch. The film is both a continuation of and a spin-off from Steven Soderbergh's ...

'' project at the facility. In addition, the 2018 and 2019, the sixth and seventh seasons of ''

Orange Is the New Black ''Orange Is the New Black'' (sometimes abbreviated to ''OITNB'') is an American comedy-drama streaming television series created by Jenji Kohan for Netflix. The series is based on Piper Kerman's memoir '' Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Wo ...

'' were filmed at the facility.

Notable inmates

Paul Bateson Paul Bateson (born August 24, 1940) is an American convicted murderer and former radiographer. He appeared as a radiologic technologist in a scene from the 1973 horror film ''The Exorcist'', which was inspired when the film's director, William F ...

, murderer who appeared in the film ''The Exorcist''Search on "Paul F Bateson", inmate #79A1383, at

References

External links

NY prison information
{{Coord, 40, 33, 02, N, 74, 13, 43, W, display=title Government buildings in Staten Island Defunct prisons in New York City 1976 establishments in New York City 2011 disestablishments in New York (state)