Ojibway Correctional Facility...

The Michigan Department of Corrections is planning to close the Ojibway Correctional Facility in Marinesco, MI, on an effort to save $19 million.

 This region is already financially depressed - and has been for generations. It isn't just about high unemployment numbers, this area has one of the highest poverty levels in the entire US. Over the decades, they have absorbed loss after loss: the loss of the mining industry with all of its attendant enterprises and job shops, a dwindling lumber industry, and now these folks are expected to absorb a $70+ million dollar hit to their economy: $21 million lost wages, $50-$55 million in other prison related expenses.  This may not be a significant number to folks in Lansing or other large, downstate communities, but to those in Marinesco, Bessemer, Wakefield, and other local communities that support this facility, this is a devestating figure.

And it isn't just about moving jobs 250 miles to Newberry.  A number of the facility employees are ALREADY driving substantial distances from homes in Hurley, WI, Bessemer, Ironwood, and other distant communities.  Promising to help some transfer to other facilities involves more than additional distance. These people have families enrolled in local schools; that translates to a loss of state aid to local school districts, leading to the loss of teachers and staff, possibly requiring the shuttering of local schools and requiring costly and time-consuming bussing to other districts.  These people also own homes that will have to be sold.  How do you propose to transfer employees to a new community, taking on new mortgages or rents, while continuing to pay mortgages on homes that, in this area, will remain on the market for months or YEARS before selling, if ever? 

This facility is one of the best-run facilities in the state.  It is also one of the newer facilities, and it went through extensive upgrades and renovations just a few years ago.  Even the MDOC has to admit that the prisoners housed in this facility are model prisoners, being well-prepared to re-enter society as productive citizens (https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/08/14/ojibway-correctional-facility-michigan-prison/985771002/).  Moving prisoners to Jackson, on the other hand, as has already happened, or other such facilities that are not nearly as well run and that house prisoner populations that are far more violent is counter-productive and will lead to higher rates of rescidivism among the former inmates of Ojibway.   YOU claim that keeping these prisoners in the Ojibway facility would be vengeful; I believe the available data prove otherwise.  It is in their best interest to continue to be housed here.

Past analysis regarding the possible closure of this facility concluded that doing so was untenable to the local communities due to the disparate - even catastrophic - effect the closure would have on them.  The state chose on the basis of these studies to keep it open in the recent past, and while it might not be intended to be a jobs program, neither is it morally or ethically supportable to locate such facilities in depressed areas where they become integrated into the local economies and then rip them out without regard for the catastrophic effect such actions will have.

There are older, more poorly run facilities that are far better candidates for closure than the Ojibway Correctional Facility.