Visiting Riverview Correctional Facility

Every Weekend Is Yours

NYSDOCCS puts it in one sentence for Riverview:

Weekend and Holiday visits are allowed for all incarcerated individuals within the facility with no restrictions.

So there is no group to work out and no calendar to check against a number or a letter. Any weekend, any holiday, for any family, and an unlimited number of visits during visiting hours.

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

Hours, and the 2:30 PM Line

Visits run 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM. The latest you can arrive is 2:30 PM, half an hour before the room closes. For a family coming from downstate, that usually means travelling the night 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, first come first served.
3. Visitors from further away, after three hours.

Visits approved by special permission, and visitors who have not seen the person in six months, are given special consideration before any visit is ended. A family travelling from New York City counts as distant.

Special Housing

Anyone in the Special Housing Unit at Riverview is allowed one non-legal visit within a seven-day period, during the same weekend hours.

Three Visitors, and the Under Fives

Three visitors at a time, plus one child under the age of five, who sits on an adult’s lap and 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 2:30 PM 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 Ogdensburg

Riverview is at 1110 Tibbits Dr. in the city of Ogdensburg, St. Lawrence County, on the St. Lawrence River.

From	Approximate journey
Gouverneur	About forty minutes
Watertown	About an hour
Syracuse	About two and a quarter hours
New York City	About six hours

Ogdensburg Correctional Facility, the city’s other state prison, closed in March 2022. Riverview is the only state prison in Ogdensburg now, so an old address or old directions for the other one lead nowhere useful.

The free state visitor bus does not serve Riverview.

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 158 with the full ZIP, so the weeks between trips are not silent ones.