SC Corrections Department closes 75-year-old unit

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The South Carolina Department of Corrections is closing a 75-year-old section of a Columbia prison and moving employees and prisoners to other sites.

Corrections Director William Byars said Tuesday the closure of several wards and a management unit at Stevenson Correctional Institution shuts a building built in 1937.

Byars says the number of beds at the unit will go from about 490 to about 260. Staff positions will be reduced from about 70 to about 30. The director says no jobs are being lost as employees are moving elsewhere in the prison system.

Byars says the number of inmates in the system has been reduced in recent years. The average population in 2010 was over 23,000. This year’s average is just over 22,000.