Radgowski Correctional Center To Be Closed By End Of Year: Lamont

MONTVILLE, CT — Gov. Ned Lamont announced that the Radgowski Correctional Center will be closed by Dec. 31. It is one of three correctional facilities scheduled for closure under the 2022-2023 state budget.

The first closure was Northern Correctional Institution in Somers. The closure of a third facility is pending.

The decision to close the facilities was attributed to the "significant drop in the state’s incarcerated population," which has decreased by more than 3,200 over the last 17 months, according to Lamont's statement.

The total population among all state-operated correctional facilities stands at about 9,200, which is down from the all-time high of 19,894 in February 2008.

The closure of Radgoswki Correctional Center is expected to save the state $7.3 million annually. The closure of the Somers facility is expected to save about $11.75 million annually.

Radgowski Correctional Center opened Jan. 10, 1991, as a medium-security facility for incarcerated men. Today, there are 108 incarcerated individuals at the facility, down from an all-time high of 734 in 2014.

Over the coming weeks, the remaining population will be transferred to other facilities in the state’s correctional system.

Radgowski Correctional Center is staffed by about 110 employees, mostly correction officers. There will be no layoffs associated with its closure, according to the statement. The Department of Correction will work with staff members and their union representatives to redeploy them to other facilities within close proximity.

Some of the reassigned staff members are anticipated to be redeployed to the Corrigan Correctional Center, located on the same compound as Radgowski.

"Connecticut’s incarcerated population has been steadily declining for more than a decade and is now at a 32-year low, even as those identified as being more high-risk are serving more of their original sentences than ever before," Lamont said in a statement. "Spending millions of dollars in annual operating costs on buildings that have historically low numbers of incarcerated individuals inside is just not a good use of resources."

"Closing a correctional facility is an extremely complex process," Department of Correction Commissioner Angel Quiros said in a statement. "However, thanks to the high caliber of our agency’s staff, I am confident that we will be able to successfully close this facility – just as we recently closed the Northern facility – in a well-planned, methodical manner while preserving jobs and continuing to protect the public’s safety."