Muskegon prison among closures

MUSKEGON, Mich. (WOOD) - The Muskegon Correctional Facility is among three state prisons and five state prison camps set to close later this year, the Michigan Department of Corrections announced Friday. The moves are expected to cut $120 million from the 2009-2010 state budget at a time when Michigan's prison population is declining, a corrections spokesman told 24 Hour News 8.

Muskegon Correctional -- a security level 2 facility on a scale with 5 as the maximum -- houses 1,326 prisoners, according to the corrections department, and employs 264, according to the corrections union. The affected facilities are expected to close sometime between August and November.

The other prisons set to close are the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility north of Bay City and the Hiawatha Correctional Facility in Kincheloe, in the eastern Upper Peninsula. All five of the state's prison camps -- Shingleton, Painesdale and Iron River in the U.P.; Grayling in the northern Lower Peninsula and White Lake in Oakland County -- are closing.

Prisoners who have served their minimum sentence, and have been determined by their parole board to be safe for release, will be paroled. The remaining inmates will be transferred to other facilities.

Corrections union Executive Director Mel Grieshaber and some law enforcement officials, including the Muskegon County undersheriff,  are still worried about the types of prisoners that would be released.

As many as 1,000 corrections positions will be eliminated. Department officials said as many employees as possible will be moved from the affected facilities into vacant spots elsewhere in the system. Grieshaber said he expects roughly 800 of the eliminated positions would be corrections officers. He said there are only a few hundred vacant positions for officers statewide.

The other prison facilities in the Muskegon area -- Brooks and West Shoreline -- area are not directly affected by Friday's announcement. But Grieshaber said employees there could be affected because employees at Muskegon Correctional with high seniority could "bump" workers at the other two facilities.

The Michigan prison population peaked at a record of 51,454 in December 2006.

But since then the population has fallen to under 48,000 through more paroles and commutations, a drop in felony convictions and prison intakes, and an expanded program to keep parolees from committing new crimes. The number of criminals entering prisons dropped 9 percent in 2008, according to the state.

Granholm wants to reduce the head count to under 45,000 by Oct. 1, the start of the next budget year. The last time the prison population was below that threshold was 1999. Granholm recently expanded the parole board so it can focus on releasing more inmates who have served their minimum sentence.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.