Correction Artifact
Recovery (Liberation) Program

In cooperation with participqting correctional agencies and organizations, NYCHS has launched an Artifact Recovery Program promoting the help of former correctional agency employees in "liberating" correction artifacts from "imprisonment" in attics, cellars and garages so they can be given places of honor in the agencies' and the society's archival collections for display and study.

For the NYCHS Artifact Recovery Program's purposes, an "artifact" is any object that was used or created in past New York correctional service and now could help illustrate the history of that service. The obvious ones include

• hardware (such as but not limited to cuffs, keys, chains, locks),
• clothing (such as but not limited to inmate and staff uniforms),
• documents (such as but not limited to records, ledgers, reports and plans),
• photographs, illustrations and signs.

Each agency participating in the program has named a contact person whose office phone number is listed so that retirees and other former employees of that agency may call concerning the recovery of that agency's artifacts.

Agency Artifact Recovery Contacts

NYS DOCS Traning Academy Superintendent John Maloy (518) 453-1885 NYS Parole Special Assistant Thomas Grant (518) 474-2121 NYC DOC Historical Services Director Thomas McCarthy (718) 417-2315 NYC Juvenile Justice Public Affairs Director Sarina Roffe (212) 925-7779 Ext. 205 NYC Probation Asst. Commissioner John Evangelista (212) 442-2910 COBA Retiree Consultant Vincent Coppola (212) 965-0152 CCA Frances Mulvaney (212) 227-4090

The society will provide anyone offering an artifact to it the phone number of the appropriate agency contact person and will encourage the person offering the artifact to make the recovery arrangements directly with the agency contact.

Individuals preferring to make artifact recovery arrangements through the society can do so by calling NYCHS general secretary Thomas McCarthy at (212) 266-1016, e-mailing him at webmaster@correctionhistory.org, or writing him at New York Correction History Society, 60 Hudson Street, Room 608, New York, N.Y., 10013. Please include a callback phone number.

Where title to an artifact offered to the society clearly belongs to the person offering it, the society will accept it for its own artifacts collection or for the collection of the agency formerly associated with the object, whichever course the offering person chooses. If the latter course is chosen, the society will forward the artifact to that agency's contact person, unless that agency designates the society to hold the object in the agency's name on loan.

Where title to an artifact offered to the society may still reside with the agency formerly associated with the object, the society will refer the matter to the Artifact Recovery Program contact person for that agency.

When the offering person requests to remain anonymous, the society will respect those wishes in referring the matter that agency's contact person.

However, whenever the offering person is agreeable to having his or her identity and role in the artifact recovery noted, the society will make and maintain a record so that proper credit may be given whenever the artifact is placed on display or made available for study.

By promoting recovery of correction history artifacts, the society seeks to prevent those objects becoming lost or their getting tossed into the trash by persons unaware of their historical value. NYCHS seeks to promote their preservation and presentation so that researchers, scholars and the public may gain better appreciation of the contribution to the New York commonweal by the men and women in correctional services, past and present.

A secure storage area has been made available to the New York Correction History Society for documentary archival and artifact collection purposes at the New York City Correction Academy in Middle Village, Queens.