Pa. to close just one prison — in Pittsburgh

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania will close its state prison in Pittsburgh this year as the state seeks to fill a budget shortfall at a time when its inmate population has begun to decline.

The Wolf administration announced the decision Thursday, weeks after corrections officials said two of the state's 26 prisons would have to close. In a statement Thursday, the Department of Corrections said the savings from closing the Pittsburgh facility – which this week was housing more than 1,800 prisoners – was enough to keep open the other four prisons that had been under consideration.

It will be the second closing in little more than a dozen years for the 19th-century prison on the Ohio River. In 2005, the state emptied the State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh, but then reopened it two years later to accommodate a surge in inmate population.

The administration predicts that shuttering SCI Pittsburgh will save Pennsylvania $81 million annually. Of the other four prisons on the chopping block, only SCI Waymart in Wayne County would have saved about that much, according to the Department of Corrections. The other three under consideration were correctional facilities in Schuylkill, Mercer, and Luzerne Counties.

"Closing a larger institution like Pittsburgh made it possible to not close two smaller prisons to reach similar savings," department officials said in a statement.

SCI Pittsburgh employs about 550 people, more than half of whom live in Allegheny County. Corrections officials reiterated their pledge to offer every worker another job in the system.

Wolf's office says the prison plan will to help it close a looming shortfall in next year's state budget that is projected this week to grow to more than $2.8 billion. It also says accommodating the inmates will not be a problem because of a decline in the overall prison population and available beds at a Cumberland County prison.

"The growing size and cost of our prisons system has gone unaddressed for too long -- rising to more than $2 billion and threatening funding for programs that the people of Pennsylvania want: education, senior care, and jobs and training programs," the governor said in a statement Thursday.

Some had questioned the move, but the closing plan also had supporters.

"With recently enacted criminal justice reforms that have shifted the focus from incarceration to treatment and community supervision for nonviolent offenders, this is a natural and logical next step," said Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf (R., Montgomery).

Asked this week on Pittsburgh radio station KDKA-AM what made SCI Pittsburgh vulnerable, Wolf noted that the prison is old -- it opened in 1882 -- and that there are "alternative economic development opportunities" on the site.

The Department of Corrections cited the relative strength of the economy of the region. Of the five prisons considered, only SCI Pittsburgh was in a county, Allegheny, where unemployment was below 5 percent as of November, it said.

Initially, the department said the Pittsburgh prison would "present significant challenges for closure." That statement pointed to its role as a diagnostic and classification center for incoming inmates and its medical specialty services, including an oncology unit.

But on Thursday, Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said those services could be moved to other facilities.

Long before the 2005 mothballing of the prison, known as the Western Penitentiary, it had been targeted for closure.

Still, the latest announcement drew criticism from the corrections officers' union and the state senator whose district includes the prison. In a statement, the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association president, Jason Bloom, said the decision had not been transparent.

"Communities were given only weeks to fight each other to stay open," he said.

The news of the pending closings also prompted pointed questions from legislators, particularly those whose districts contain or neighbor one of the five prisons on the initial list. During a Senate hearing Monday, corrections officials were pressed about the speed of their decision. On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman (R., Centre) and Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (D., Allegheny) asked Wolf in a letter to delay the decision.

Sen. Wayne Fontana, an Allegheny County Democrat, had pushed for SCI Pittsburgh to remain open and argued that the selection of a prison to close was made too hastily. With the decision made, he said he would advocate for the displaced employees and for redevelopment of the site.

"The immediate future is to find somebody interested and come up with a plan to put it back on the tax rolls and create jobs," he said.

People who would be involved in or closely observing the potential redevelopment said Thursday that it was too soon to know what type of business or other facility might find a home there. Kevin Acklin, chief of staff to Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and chairman of the board of the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority, said the property could be used for housing or could find commercial or light industrial use.

The secretary of the state Department of Community and Economic Development, Dennis Davin, said the site presents a well-placed redevelopment opportunity.

"Waterfront property is in high demand in the Pittsburgh region, and it's really in high demand around the ethane cracker plant,"  Davin said.