Gov. Ned Lamont announced Monday that the state's Department of Correction is closing the Northern Correctional Institution due to a decrease in crime and the prison population.

The prison will be closed by July 1.

Lamont says there are only 65 people in the prison currently, and the population has not been over 100 since July of last year.

He says that closing the prison will save Connecticut around $12.6 million in operating costs.

“Northern is a monument to cruelty and systemic racism. In sum, it is a symbol of everything that is wrong with incarceration. Closing Northern would be a welcome, necessary, and important step toward moving Connecticut into a better future," says David McGuire, the executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut.

The ACLU of Connecticut has sued the Department of Corrections over conditions at the prison twice - once in 2004 and last week.

Northern Correctional Institution is the state's only maximum security prison.