A New York Prison Locked Men Up For Drugs. Now the Site Will Grow Marijuana Town officials look to add jobs and tax revenue, but some parents and small growers aren’t thrilled
In the 1930s, the prison site served as a state reform school that tried to rehabilitate wayward New York City boys with chores tending vegetables, cows and chickens. In the late 1970s the state turned it into the Mid-Orange Correctional Facility for the surge of people being incarcerated during the national crackdown on drug offenses. It was shut in 2011, after the number of men there dwindled.