By RICK MILLER
Olean Star
GOWANDA — New York State plans to consolidate the Collins Correctional Facility into half of the prison and keep the current corrections officers and staff levels.
The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision announced Tuesday that a medium-security prison in Franklin County near Albany would close and that Collins, in Southern Erie County north of Gowanda, had avoided the chopping block.
The 2025 state budget allowed for the closure of up to three prisons. Having been the epicenter of the corrections officers’ wildcat strike earlier this year, Collins Correctional Facility had been on DOCCS radar.
Collins currently has 590 inmates, down from 909 in 2022. With 590 inmates, the prison is at 56% capacity. There are currently 742 staff, including corrections officers, at Coillins.
The neighboring Gowanda State Prison closed in 2021, at a cost of more than 600 jobs.
State Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, said that saving the prison and its jobs was important to the community.
Borrello and other Republican state lawmakers are convinced that the state has released too many inmates from state prisons. It would be different if releasing inmates did not result in more violent crime, Borrello said.
“The good news is that Collins is not closing,” Borrello said. It does not solve the systemic problems prisons face including under staffing, forced overtime and increased violence by inmates, he added. “It is a bandaid on a growing crisis.”
The Chautauqua County state Senator said he had concerns over closing the half the prison where areas where staff helped inmates avoid becoming a repeat offender and where addiction services are located.
The half of the prison scheduled to be closed will be heated and maintained for future use if necessary, according to DOCCS.
“People need to remember that the National Guard are still deployed in some of our prisons,” Borrello said. “Promises made to corrections officers have not been fulfilled. Contraband is the worst ever and violence continues to rise,” he said.
“The governor has not addressed the issues that led to the strike,” Borrello said.
