By Lindsay Boyle
The Day
EAST LYME, Conn. — Gov. Dannel Malloy on Wednesday confirmed what a state Department of Correction official told The Day Monday: The state is closing the men’s unit at the Janet S. York Correctional Institution this month.
Speaking at a news conference in the nearby, defunct J.B. Gates Correctional Institution, Malloy said the closure of what’s called the Niantic Annex is the product of a “very solid trend.”
“This is a direct result of the lowest prison population in nearly 20 years and the lowest crime rate in nearly 50 years,” Malloy said. “We have far fewer people entering prison today than at any time in the last quarter century.”
In February of 2008, Malloy explained, the state’s prison population peaked at 19,894. As of Wednesday night, it was 15,645, according to the Department of Correction’s website.
Malloy said he didn’t anticipate any layoffs stemming from the closure. The about 550 staffers of the Niantic Annex, Malloy explained, have the choice to merge into York Correctional or to apply to transfer elsewhere.
Operations at York Correctional, the state’s only women’s facility, won’t be affected.
Department of Correction Commissioner Scott Semple, also present at the conference, said “there’s no intention to close” Second Chance Corral — a program in which inmates care for abused farm animals that are sheltered on-site — despite the loss of the male inmates.
“We have a number of women on the campus ... including different categories of inmates with respect to risk,” Semple said. “We anticipate that they will be able to maintain the program.”
As for the Niantic Annex’s about 400 male inmates, they have been and will continue to be transferred to other facilities with openings across the state.
According to Malloy, only 44 of the annex’s inmates remain, and they’ll be moved by the end of this weekend.
Closing the men’s unit will save taxpayers about $7.6 million per year, according to a news release.
On Monday, Karen Martucci, acting director of the department’s External Affairs Division, said it was “the intention from the beginning” for the Niantic Annex to be temporary.
According to the Department of Correction’s website, the annex opened in June 2011 as a 225-man unit meant to house inmates leaving the Gates Correctional Institution, which closed its doors the same year.
The Day’s archives show that the annex also took in about 230 inmates from the now-defunct Bergin Correctional Institution in Mansfield in August 2011, pushing its total to about 585 inmates for a time.
After the annex’s closure, there will be 16 correctional facilities operating in the state, including a youth institution and the recently created Cybulski Community Reintegration Center.
The Cybulski center, located within the Willard-Cybulski Correctional Institution in Enfield, is fit to be home to about 600 men who will receive intensive services in the months before they are released as part of Gov. Dannel Malloy’s “Second Chance Society” initiative.
Plans also are in the works to bring the country’s first 18- to-25-only prison to the state by January 2017. According to the AP, the facility, which likely would be installed in one of the state’s previously closed facilities, would be created with the goal of targeting that age group’s specific needs and reducing recidivism.
“This (annex closure) is not just about what’s happened in the last six months or 12 months,” Malloy said Wednesday. “It’s about what is a very solid trend, and one that we’re actually trying to increase in its velocity.”
The Niantic Annex is located at 201 W. Main St. in Niantic.
Copyright 2016 The Day