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| Pa. announces plan to mothball 'Western Pen' |
| By Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |
| Published: 02/23/2004 |
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The State Correctional Institution Pittsburgh -- better known to Pittsburghers as "Western Pen" -- will finally be shut down by late this year or early in 2005, a Corrections Department spokeswoman said last week. The technical term is "mothballed,'' meaning emptied of all inmates and most of the staff, except for a skeleton crew of no more than 10 people to maintain the physical structure and maintain security, said Sue McNaughton of Corrections. The aging prison on the Ohio River, which opened in 1882, has been scheduled for closure for several years. A new 2,200-inmate prison in Luzerne, Fayette County, opened last August and another new prison, SCI Forest (in Forest County) will open in October. It will also hold about 2,200 inmates. SCI Pittsburgh held 887 inmates as of last week, down from 1,700 last August. The remaining inmates will gradually be transferred to other prisons, mainly the new one in Fayette County, which so far has just under 600 inmates. Each of the two new prisons will have about 700 jobs. The 725 employees at SCI Pittsburgh will have a chance to transfer to another prison. |
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