East Lyme — State Department of Correction officials said on Monday that they're working on closing the men's unit that has been operating at the Janet S. York Correctional Institution since 2011.

According to Karen Martucci, acting director of the department's External Affairs Division, the Niantic Annex should be closed within the next few weeks.

Martucci, who said more information will be available at the time of the closure, confirmed that the facility houses slightly more than 400 inmates who will be transferred to "various locations."

It's unclear at this point whether any jobs will be affected or if the state will save money as a result of the move. According to the state Department of Correction's website, 502 people currently staff the annex at York, which is the state's only women's facility.

Martucci said it was "the intention from the beginning" for the Niantic Annex to be temporary.

According to the Department of Correction's website, the annex opened in June 2011 as a 225-man unit meant to house inmates leaving the nearby J.B. Gates Correctional Institution, which closed its doors the same year.

The Day's archives show that the annex also took in about 230 inmates from the now-defunct Bergin Correctional Institution in Mansfield in August 2011, pushing its total to about 585 inmates for a time.

State officials in April 2011 said they were closing facilities because the state's prison population, about 17,650 at the time, had hit a 10-year-low. The high, they said, occurred in February 2008, when there were more than 19,800 inmates.

In October, the most recently available statistics show, the state averaged a prison population of about 16,070.

After the annex's closure, there will be 16 correctional facilities operating in the state, including a youth institution and the recently-created Cybulski Community Reintegration Center.

The Cybulski center, located within the Willard-Cybulski Correctional Institution in Enfield, eventually will be home to about 600 men who will receive intensive services in the months before they are released as part of Gov. Dannel Malloy's "Second Chance Society" initiative.

Plans also are in the works to bring the country's first 18- to-25-only prison to the state by January 2017. According to the AP, the facility, which likely would be installed in one of the state's previously closed facilities, would be created with the goal of targeting that age group's specific needs and reducing recidivism.

The Niantic Annex is located at 201 W. Main St. in Niantic.

l.boyle@theday.com

Twitter: @LindsayABoyle