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| Department of Correction to close a portion of the Bridgeport Correctional Center |
| By The Connecticut Department of Corrections |
| Published: 07/11/2015 |
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In response to a steady decline in the incarcerated inmate population, the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Correction, Scott Semple, has announced that a portion of the Bridgeport Correctional Center, known as the Fairmont Building will be closed by the end of July, 2015. The closing of the 204-bed Fairmont Building will save the taxpayers of the state more than $2.1 million per fiscal year. Originally opened in 1958, the Bridgeport Correctional Center is a Level 4 high-security facility which confines both pretrial and sentenced offenders, which currently houses approximately 950 offenders. As a result of the declining inmate population, the agency currently has enough open beds to appropriately disperse the offenders currently located in the Fairmont Building to other facilities within the state. Due to a variety of factors, including Second Chance Society policy changes by Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s administration made with the bipartisan collaboration of the State Legislature, the prison population continues to consistently trend downward. The incarceration level currently stands at 16,064. The population is down more than 360 from the same time last year and is substantially below the all-time high of 19,894. Pre-trial admissions are down as well, overall for the Department of Correction pre-trial admissions are down 9.3% for the first six months of 2015 when compared to the first six months of 2014. “With the passage of the Second Chance Society Bill, I am confident that this downward trend in the prison population will continue,” said Commissioner Semple. “The agency will continue to work collaboratively with key stakeholders to help support successful reintegration of offenders back into their communities. This is not a soft on crime approach, this is a smart approach to encourage successful reentry.” The Department of Correction has already taken steps to better facilitate offender reentry. Those strategies include a newly created streamlined centralized release unit, as well as the opening of the Cybulski Community Reintegration Center – a recently rededicated 600-bed facility which specializes in preparing offenders for reentry. The department had previously closed the Webster Correctional Institution, in Cheshire in January of 2010, $3.4 million a year; the Gates Correctional Institution in Naintic in June of 2011 at a savings a $12.3 million per year, and the Bergin Correctional Institution in Storrs, in August of 2011 at a savings of $12 million per year. |
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