State Proposing to Close Minimum-Security Prison
The state is recommending that a minimum-security prison in Cheshire be closed, a move that would have been unheard of during the tough-on-crime days of the mid-1990s. News reported by the Hartford Courant.
The state Department of Correction wants to close the Webster Correctional Institution, which holds about 220 criminals near the end of their sentences.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell sought the department’s recommendation as a way to cut expenses while the government tries to recover from the worst economic downturn in decades. Closing the Cheshire prison would save an estimated $3.4 million a year when the state’s budget deficit projection for the current fiscal year is approaching $550 million.
The recommendation marks a sharp departure from the days when Connecticut was building prisons in the 1980s and rapidly expanding the space to house convicted criminals. No prisons have been closed in recent state history, and the Cheshire recommendation stirred up some controversy Tuesday.
The prison guards’ union calls it a bad idea, even though it would not cause layoffs.
“Closing Webster will put greater strain on other overburdened facilities and services,” said Dwayne Bickford, president of AFSCME Local 387. “Our correctional employees walk Connecticut’s toughest beat, and we will continue to do everything in our power to keep Connecticut safe. Shutting down a prison like Webster is ill-advised. It will not improve public safety.”
Rell can enforce a prison closure under her own authority and cannot be blocked by the legislature, which, in passing a state budget in September, directed her to find millions of dollars in savings in the Department of Correction.
Rell had ordered the department to recommend a prison for closing — a controversial step because it involves moving both criminals as well as staff members who range from first-year union members to experienced supervisors. About 120 state employees work at the prison — including maintenance staff, teachers, addiction counselors and others.
“We face an extraordinarily difficult budget situation — a challenge unlike any we have known in modern memory,” Rell said in a statement Tuesday. “The state prison population is currently about 18,300, down from nearly 19,900 in February 2008. While other states — including states facing even more severe budget problems than our own — are being forced to build new prisons, we can make the most of our successes by building on these achievements.”
“Any decision such as this must always be made with public safety foremost in our minds,” Rell said. “The recommendation from DOC notes that closing a minimum security facility is easier to accomplish because any inmates that need to be moved can be shifted to higher-security locations if necessary. The closure can also be accomplished without laying off any of the dedicated DOC staff, who perform one of the most dangerous — yet most necessary — tasks in state government.”
Parts of Webster, which opened in October 1990, are already closed. The state shut down two of its four units in the past year.
The remaining 220 or so inmates will need to be transferred within the system that includes 17 other prisons.
Webster is classified as a Level 2 facility. Level 1 is reserved for released criminals who are placed in the community. Level 5 is maximum security.
The recommendation would keep open the 110-inmate Webster Annex, which handles inmates who clean highways during the day and return to the annex at night.
Although the recommendation calls for the prison to be closed, Rell has said that it would be reopened if necessary — due to a jump in crime or a higher level of convictions. The prison shutdown would be accomplished over eight to 10 weeks, according to acting Correction Commissioner Brian K. Murphy.
State Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, D-East Haven, one of the legislature’s leading authorities on criminal justice, said that the shutdown should not be difficult.
“It’s like four big, open rooms with bunk beds,” Lawlor said. “There are no cells in there. People find that hard to picture. No prison cells at all. No bars. No nothing. Minimum security.”
If the state’s super-max prison in Somers is filled with the worst of the worst, Lawlor said, then “Webster is filled with the least of the least.”
The closure is possible because the number of inmates has plummeted since a peak that followed the slayings of three members of the Petit family in Cheshire on July 23, 2007.
The state’s prison population exploded by about 1,200 after Rell froze the parole system following the Petit case.
It reached an all-time high of 19,894 inmates on Feb. 1, 2008, according to the Department of Correction.
Two longtime criminals who were out on parole at the time now face the death penalty if convicted in the slayings, which prompted the legislature to make changes in the state criminal justice system in a special session.
Rell said that the state’s full-time parole board is operating efficiently now and that some re-entry programs have permitted criminals to get out of prison.
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