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State Prison In Northwest Oklahoma Will Close At End Of The Year

William S. Key Correctional Center, a minimum-security prison located in Ft. Supply, Okla.
Oklahoma Department of Corrections
William S. Key Correctional Center, a minimum-security prison located in Ft. Supply, Okla.

An Oklahoma state prison is scheduled to close at the end of the year.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections said William S. Key Correctional Center in Ft. Supply is unsafe and too expensive to keep open.

"The decision to close a facility is always a difficult one," said ODOC Director Scott Crow. "However, in order to assure the safety of our staff and inmates and act as proper stewards of the taxpayer funds we are entrusted with, this decision had to be made."

After a long review process, the state corrections agency found the more than 50-year-old prison's housing units were not originally built to prison specifications and maintaining them is not feasible.

There are about 1,000 prisoners inside the minimum security prison. The corrections agency will transfer those men to other minimum security prisons.

Quinton Chandler worked at StateImpact Oklahoma from January 2018 to August 2021, focusing on criminal justice reporting.
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