Back in the early 1970s, it seemed that no one in New York state wanted a prison in the neighborhood, or even the region — no one except Sen. Ronald Stafford, that is. He spent 37 years representing a huge Senate District that included parts of the Adirondacks and all of our circulation area.

Stafford saw in the prisons an industry that could sustain the North Country during the employment highs and, especially, lows that steer an economy or are steered by it.

Stafford grew up the son of a farmer at Clinton Correctional Facility and was instrumental in getting nine more state prisons established in the North Country between 1976 and 1999. Collectively, they have kept employment and standard-of-living figures in the region respectable. Individually, they have greatly helped their communities thrive in spite of a scarce population and scarcer industrial development. No matter what was going on in society, you could always count on people breaking the law and needing incarceration.

That, however, is beginning to change. The State Legislature has decided that Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's oppressive sentencing laws for drug possession were oppressive indeed. Passed in May of 1973, the laws included a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life for selling two ounces of "narcotic drug" or possessing four. Eventually, and gradually, some provisions were eased, but until this year, the law remained essentially intact.

Meanwhile, the prison population peaked in the state at about 71,000 inmates but has subsided to about 60,000. It is bound to come down fairly dramatically as the new guidelines for sentencing drug offenders take effect.

Camp Gabriels, opened in 1982, is to be closed down this July because of a bare state budget. The town now relies so heavily on the prison that it will be extremely distressed if leaders can't come up with an alternative use. Ironically, Gabriels could benefit from being in the first wave of closures, if it does become a wave. Drug treatment is one option being aggressively pursued as a viable after-use for the prison.

But can the nine other prisons in the region count on their own viability as the population decreases and the budget with it?

"We're probably going to have to close prisons," Sen. Betty Little, Stafford's successor, admitted during an interview last week with the Press-Republican Editorial Board. She suggests closing Sing Sing, which sits on valuable land on the Hudson River in Westchester County, because the land could be put to better use.

Nevertheless, a battle for survival is very likely going to be waged by Little and others as budgets and changing prison populations exert their weight.

As much as we dread the thought of losing jobs in this employment-starved region, we realize, as Little does, that if the trends persist, prison closings may be inevitable. Community leaders would be wise to begin working very hard right now to compile justifications for use — and, just in case, plans for after-use.