By Rick Pluta, Michigan Public Radio Network
LANSING, MI –
Prison inmates from Pennsylvania are arriving in Michigan this week to be housed in a state prison in Muskegon that would otherwise be closed. Pennsylvania is paying Michigan $62 per day for each inmate in an effort to relieve its prison over-crowding crisis.
Russ Marlan is the spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections.
"Initially, they're going to send us a thousand and the contract calls for up to, I believe, 13-hundred and 21," he says. "We expect to get the initial shipment of a thousand prisoners and probably a couple hundred more in a few weeks."
Marlan says the state will break even on the deal, but it allows 250 corrections officers to remain employed at the facility. He says the Corrections Department is still trying to strike a deal with other states or the federal government to house inmates at a prison in Standish in northern Michigan.