By LOHR McKINSTRY
MORIAH — If the Moriah Shock Incarceration Facility closes, as planned, correction officer David Abair will have a long commute to the closest similar facility if he wants to stay employed.
Gov. David Paterson and the Department of Corrections want to close the Moriah prison as a money-saving measure. They say no one will lose a job — if they are willing to relocate to another prison.
"The state wants to create more jobs," Abair said. "But they want to take our jobs. They're sending a mixed message."
Abair transferred to Moriah Shock after working nine years at a regular prison and found the change to be dramatic.
"I'm a different person since I got to Moriah. It's such a rewarding job. We take in boys and send home men. They learn to understand the value of a family."
The state's shock camps use bootcamp-type training to rehabilitate first-time drug offenders, who are then paroled.
Abair and the other correction officers serve as drill instructors at the camp, and they have to be in good physical shape themselves to get the inmates in shape.
"We teach them life skills. It's the basic decisions we made as we grew up."
His wife, Donna, said that when her husband worked at Upstate Correctional Facility in Malone, it was a very stressful job.
"Now he's not stressed out; he's invigorated. He comes home and tells me about his job. At Upstate, he never talked about his job. Scary things happened."
Abair said that to continue at a shock-type prison, he'd have to drive to a place like Summit Shock Incarceration Facility or Willard Drug Treatment Campus.
He believes his family life will suffer greatly.
"I may end up four or five hours away. It's going to be hard on my family."
With a wife and two grown children, Abair said, he wouldn't move from their home near Lake Champlain at Port Kent, so he would have to commute.
CLOSE TO RETIREMENT
Moriah Shock correction officer Juleigh Walker said that by the time Moriah closes in early 2011, she'll be nearing possible retirement.
Walker said she'll probably have to transfer to Willard and commute to work from her home in Westport.
"I'd still have four months before I could retire, although I wasn't going to retire at 25 years. I was going to go 30."
Walker thinks many of the 102 staff members at Moriah Shock would have to move out of the area.
Mr. Abair said the prison's closure would be devastating to himself and everyone who works there.
"People will lose jobs, and many will be displaced. Everyone is going to be hurt."
Mrs. Abair said that when Moriah Shock opened in the 1980s it was to help people in an economically depressed area.
"They put this here because there was abject poverty. There's still abject poverty."
E-mail Lohr McKinstry at: lmckinstry@pressrepublican.com
