LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan Department of Corrections will close Ojibway Correctional Facility in the western Upper Peninsula on Dec. 1, the director announced Tuesday.
The closure is required to meet a cut of more than $19 million in the prison budget for 2019, for which lawmakers instructed the department to close an unspecified prison.
Now, that prison has been identified.
Ojibway, originally opened as a prison camp in 1971, is located in Marenisco and houses up to 1,180 lower-security prisoners. The department has been closing units there recently and it is now down to about 800 prisoners, department spokesman Chris Gautz said.
The prison employs 203 people, of which 116 are corrections officers, Gautz said. About 20 of the employees are Wisconsin residents.
"We know closures are a challenging time, both for staff at the facility and at other facilities in the region that will be impacted," Director Heidi Washington said in an email to department employees obtained by the Free Press.
"We are going to do everything we can to support them through this process."
Washington said "there was not one single factor that led to the difficult decision to close Ojibway and we closely examined our operations statewide before making this selection."
Gautz said it's difficult to hire qualified employees in that area to give mental health counseling and drug treatment. As a result, many of the prisoners are model prisoners who don't have those problems and are close to their parole dates. But it's important to have family support around parole time and the department is uncomfortable "rewarding" good prisoners by sending them so far away from their loved ones, Gautz said.
Byron Osborn, president of the Michigan Corrections Organization union, said prison closures are stressful for officers and their families because "critical aspects of day-to-day life are made uncertain."
That will be especially true in the case of Ojibway, because the prison is located in a small, tight-knit community and the nearest prison for a possible transfer is about 100 miles away.
Rep. Scott Dianda, D-Calumet, issued a statement criticizing the decision.
“This is bad news for the more than 200 employees who support their families thanks to the good jobs that Ojibway Correctional Facility provides for people across the western U.P.," Dianda said.
"Some of these workers drive from surrounding towns and counties, but now the closest facility they might be able to transfer to would be more than 100 miles away. That’s a tough option for a family up here particularly in the winter months.”
The closure decision "puts the state’s bottom line before community safety and working families, and that is appalling," Dianda said.
Washington said in her email that Michigan's 'falling prisoner population and historically low recidivism rate is proof that we are moving in the right direction as we work to give offenders the skills they need to be successful in the community."
There are no immediate plans for how the facility will be used, but we are developing a plan that will address all of our closed sites, she said.
The department also shuttered West Shoreline Correctional Facility in the Muskegon area earlier this year.
The state's prison population, which peaked at 51,500 in 2007, dropped below 40,000 in 2017 and continues to trend lower. Lawmakers credited department efforts to better prepare prisoners for a return to the state workforce.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.
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