LANSING, MI (WTVB) – While there was never any serious speculation that the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater might be on the chopping block, the Michigan Department of Corrections announced Tuesday it will close the Ojibway Correctional Facility in Gogebic County to fulfill a requirement in the upcoming state budget.
The Fiscal Year 2019 budget, which starts October 1, 2018, required the state to close a prison, without initially specifying which facility would shut down. The budget anticipates a savings of $19.2 million from such a closure, with some of that money put toward K-12 education.
The Ojibway Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula’s Gogebic County will be closed December 1, 2018.. The facility was opened as a camp in 1971 and converted to a prison in 2,000. It has 1,162 beds and employs 203 people.
The state’s prison population has declined by more than 10 percent in the last three years.
The prison will be the third closed in recent years. The state closed the West Shoreline Correctional Facility in Muskegon in March and the Pugsley Correctional Facility in 2016. The state has closed and consolidated 27 prisons and camps since 2005.
