Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration is recommending the closure of Rockview state prison and the Quehanna boot camp, both in central Pennsylvania, amid longer-term national trends of shrinking prison populations.
The administration said on Monday it expects to save more than $100 million in future fiscal years, once the facilities are closed. Prison staff will be guaranteed a job offer at their existing pay and classification at a nearby correctional institution, the administration said.
It added that public comment will be accepted for three months before a final decision is made. The state’s 24 prisons are at about 82% capacity, according to Department of Corrections data.
Shapiro announced last week when he released his budget proposal that he would close two prisons amid steeply rising Medicaid costs.
The union that represents prison staff, the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association, has said it will fight the closures and warned that closing two prisons will endanger officers and inmates. Violence in the prisons has dropped, in part, because the prison population is spread more evenly, the union said.
Still, half of all prisons were over 90% capacity last year and four were over 100% capacity, the union said.
Rockview, in Centre County, was built in 1915 and is the second-oldest state prison, the corrections department said. It has about 650 staff and houses about 2,100 inmates out of a capacity of more than 2,500, the department said.
Quehanna boot camp, in Clearfield County, is designed for lower-risk inmates and lacks traditional prison security measures, such as a fence. It has about 230 staff and houses about 350 inmates out of a capacity of about 600.
All told, state prisons hold just over 38,000 inmates, as of December. That figure has crept up in the past couple years, but is down from about 45,000 five years ago and 49,000 a decade ago, when many prisons were over capacity.
Shapiro’s predecessors closed three prisons over the past decade and opened one new one, Phoenix, in suburban Philadelphia. Shapiro’s administration also said it would close halfway houses, called community corrections centers, in Greene and Berks counties.
