Visiting Altona Correctional Facility

Every Visiting Day Is Yours

All incarcerated individuals may receive visits on scheduled visiting days.

No group to work out and no calendar to check against a number or a letter. The facility page adds that visits are unlimited during visiting hours.

Weekday Holidays

Under the NYSDOCCS visitation update that took effect on 7 September 2026, Altona is one of the prisons that takes visits on weekday holidays.

Hours, and the 1:30 PM Line

Visits run 8:00 AM to 2:30 PM. The latest you can arrive is 1:30 PM, an hour before the room closes. For a family travelling from downstate, that usually means travelling up the day before.

When the Room Is Full

If space runs short, NYSDOCCS ends visits in a published order:

1. Visitors who volunteer to leave.
2. Local visitors, from within 100 miles, after three hours.
3. Visitors from further away, after three hours.

Visitors who have not seen the person in six months are given special consideration.

Three Visitors, and the Under Fives

Three visitors at a time, plus one child under the age of five, who does not count toward the three.

A child of five or older does count, so three adults and a six year old is a group of four and will not fit.

How a Visit Is Arranged

Nothing needs booking for a regular visit. Under NYSDOCCS rules you can visit during visiting hours with proper photo identification, as long as the person inside agrees to the visit.

On a first visit, staff take your photograph for the visitor identification system and you sign a statement agreeing to the visiting rules. Leave time for it before the arrival cutoff.

Some visitors need advance written approval: people on probation or parole, NYSDOCCS staff, volunteers, contract workers, and anyone with past or pending criminal cases.

Children are straightforward. Their own children can visit without written permission where the parent’s name is on the birth certificate. A child under eighteen visiting without a parent or guardian needs the parent’s written permission.

Getting to Altona

Altona is at 555 Devils Den Road, in Clinton County, near the Canadian border.

From	Approximate journey
Plattsburgh	About half an hour
Dannemora	About twenty five minutes
Montreal	About an hour
New York City	About five and a half hours

Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Dannemora, is in the same county. It is a separate prison with its own visiting rules.

The free state visitor bus does not serve Altona.

What to Bring

Photo identification for everyone over sixteen, and the visit does not proceed without it.

Phones, bags and electronics stay in the car.

If you are bringing money, the visitor lockbox takes $50 in cash a day in total, however many of you are visiting, and it takes money orders and checks as well.

Between the Long Journeys

Every weekend is open, but few families can make the trip every weekend.

Calls from every New York state prison have been free since August 2025, and letters and photographs fill what the calls cannot. Pigeonly sends both from your phone, addressed to P.O. Box 3000 in Altona, so the weeks between trips are not silent ones.