State Department of Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens said Wednesday that the bulk of those jobs have been eliminated through attrition.
Owens told a joint legislative appropriations committee hearing that after decades of skyrocketing growth, the state's prison population has been leveling out. Owens said about 60,000 inmates are currently behind bars.
The state is shutting down three more prisons this year. It already shuttered Scott State Prison in Milledgeville in August. Those four prisons combined had 3,500 beds.
The state is transferring those prisoners to private prisons and so-called fast-track expansions at existing prisons.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2010/1/226380