The Michigan Department of Corrections is pushing back against a report from the state Auditor General claiming the department didn’t adequately document prison closures.
The report follows up on a 2012 report which said the Department of Corrections did not maintain sufficient documentation on how it determined which prisons to close.
Chris Gautz is a spokesperson for the Corrections Department. He said in the initial 2012 audit they provided roughly 100 pages of documents to explain 20 prison closures.
“This follow-up audit was to examine the closure of two facilities and we provided probably 7-8 times as many documents for those two closures as the department previously did for 20.”
Gautz said the Auditor General’s office has not been clear about what the department needed to do in order to “fully consider” closing a prison.
“So we said if you don’t have a definition for what ‘fully considered’ means how is that our answer is wrong and your answer is right? They didn’t have an answer for that.”
The office of the Auditor General did not respond to our request for comment.