MAHONING COUNTY Chiefs group blasts incarceration rate

An FBI agent says something in Mahoning County is 'definitely wrong.'
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The number of criminals sent to state prisons from Mahoning County -- 236 last year -- doesn't surprise local police, who have a running joke: Bad guys commit one felony in Trumbull County and go to prison; in Mahoning County they need 12, says Boardman Police Chief Jeff Patterson.
The reality, he said, is that repeat offenders in Mahoning County too often get probation or a light sentence. That's not the case in Trumbull or Columbiana counties, he said.
The Mahoning Valley Chiefs of Police Association, of which Patterson is a member, is speaking out against reduced charges and plea-bargained sentences. The chiefs say citizens and businesses are repeatedly victimized by lifelong, predatory street criminals.
Tammy King, chairwoman of the Youngstown State University Criminal Justice Department, said it's important to remember that roughly 90 percent of cases are resolved with a plea agreement. Charges can be amended for a variety of reasons, including evidence concerns, she said.
King said that she understands the police chiefs' frustration with repeat offenders but that they must decide what "hierarchy" of criminals they want off the streets. Prison overcrowding has to be considered -- "We can't keep building prisons," she said.
In the past 10 years, Mahoning County sent 2,065 men and women to state prisons, Trumbull County sent 2,307, and Columbiana County sent 889. With 257,555 residents, Mahoning has the largest population, Trumbull is next with 225,116 and Columbiana, 112,075.
During the past decade, Youngstown, the largest city in Mahoning County, had the highest per capita murder rate in the state. During that span, Vindicator files show 492 homicides for Mahoning, 74 for Trumbull and 17 for Columbiana counties.
Patterson said a homicide rate can be used to show how "healthy" a community is but noted other crimes affect a community overall. If you've ever had a house broken into, you might move; if you've had your car broken into at the mall, you don't feel safe there, he said.
Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court said the comparison of one county's prison sentencing to another's is not fair because judges aren't elected in a bloc; they're elected individually.
The judge said that he knows that lenient is not used to characterize him and that fair is the only label he wants.
Indictments vs. incarceration
As another comparison of criminal justice systems in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties, The Vindicator reviewed Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction prison records for 2002, then matched the number of inmates with indictments in those counties.
King said parallels can be drawn by comparing indictments and prison commitments. An indictment, in most cases, represents one defendant. Sentencings in one calendar year are typically from cases filed the previous year.
In 2001, Mahoning had 702 indictments, Trumbull had 591, and Columbiana County had 230, records show. In 2002, Mahoning sent 236 criminals to prison; Trumbull sent 245; and Columbiana sent 102.
In that period, roughly 44 percent of Columbiana's indictments resulted in prison. In Trumbull, it was slightly more than 41 percent. In Mahoning County, it was around 33 percent.
The judge said the chiefs' perspective is an appropriate one: They should want people to be arrested and put in prison, but they have to respect the roles of others in the system. "My belief in the criminal justice system is that everyone has a role to play and everyone has to play their part with professionalism and with competence, and then it works," he said.
Youngstown Police Chief Robert E. Bush Jr. said he wasn't surprised to learn the number of criminals Mahoning County sends to prison, compared with Trumbull County. He said on a case-by-case basis, though, the courts do a good job and he can't knock the process.
"Historically, the bad guys know if you get busted in Trumbull County -- felony or misdemeanor -- your chances of being incarcerated are great," Bush said. "That's what concerned [U.S. attorney] Greg White -- he couldn't understand the difference."
Bush said the only explanation for the disparity in prison commitments is what White said in late June during the Gun Reduction Interdiction Project kickoff -- that judges, police, prosecutors and residents set community standards. The chief said he'd like to see tougher Youngstown standards.
"Yes, historically, Mahoning County has been more lenient, more tolerant," said Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains. "I agree with Bush, I would also like to see the community standards tightened -- that's why we rarely dismiss firearms specification charges."
Wants state action
Gains said he would like to see the Legislature reinstate the enhanced penalties it did away with several years ago. That way, a second misdemeanor theft, for example, would be a felony and qualify for prison time, a result that would satisfy the chiefs' concerns.
"Give us the tools and we'll ship 'em," Gains said is his message to the Legislature.
The prosecutor said Community Corrections Association, a short-term (six months) halfway facility on Market Street, houses many first-time offenders, and he speculated that without it maybe more criminals would go to prison. He acknowledged that CCA does not accept repeat offenders.
FBI Special Agent John J. Kane, head of the bureau's Boardman office, said the crime rate falls back on the judicial system. He said Mahoning County's prison numbers are what he expected.
"There's something wrong -- something definitely wrong," Kane said.
Kane said the whole idea of GRIP this summer was to bring the hammer down by prosecuting gun crimes at the federal level. Such prosecution isn't possible unless the defendant has a prior felony conviction in common pleas court, a weapons offense for example, that qualifies the defendant for federal court, he said.
Shoulders some blame
Patterson said the chiefs association has to take some of the blame for criminals' not having a felony record, which precludes them, in most cases, from being prosecuted federally.
Rather than sending all felony charges to common pleas court, Boardman charges some of the crimes as misdemeanors, which leaves the cases in the county court, Patterson said. That way, the criminals "go to the county jail and we get them off the streets for a while. If we took the charges downtown, they'd get probation."
A portion of the overcrowding at the Mahoning County jail can be traced to inmates who should have been convicted of low-level felonies and sent to state prisons, he said.
Some low-level felonies have a presumption of probation, but the presumption can be overcome based on certain factors, according to the state law.
"If you don't send [criminals] away, they're back out committing crimes," Kane said. "How many do we arrest after they kill somebody who might not have been free if given sentences commensurate with other counties in Ohio?"
Cuyahoga County, for example, is 51/2 times larger than Mahoning County but sent 22 times more criminals to state prisons last year, state prison records show.
Past case-fixing
Patterson said his theory is that for so many years, case-fixing in Mahoning County resulted in probation instead of incarceration and, to this day, the idea of probation is "almost ingrained" with judges and prosecutors.
The chief called a farce the common practice of having criminals on double, triple, even quadruple probation.
"It's just outrageous that a person can commit another crime while out on probation and get probation again," he said. "Repeat offenders should be sent away."
Patterson said the chiefs association is not looking for conflict but it sees problems in the criminal justice system that need to be corrected.
He said some may argue the chiefs' position is political, or city vs. township, or race, or class.
"It isn't. It's a crime issue," Patterson said. "At some point, this whole culture of not taking serious crimes seriously has to change. It's not like this everywhere else. If you want economic development, you have to make the place safe."
Chiefs' vow
The chiefs association, Patterson said, is no longer willing to sign off on plea agreements that don't adequately reflect the crime and punishment deserved. Such agreements, worked out between prosecutors and defense attorneys, don't need police approval -- judges accept or reject a plea bargain.
Judge Jack Durkin, a Mahoning County common pleas judge, said if police in the future don't accept a reduced charge for a plea agreement, "It's going to solve part of the problem because the prosecutor will not have the authority to amend the charge -- at least in this courtroom."
Judge Durkin said he didn't have any answer -- "I'm sure there are many" -- for the disparity in the number of people sent to prison from Mahoning County, compared with Trumbull and Columbiana counties.
The judge, who oversees drug court, then gave his philosophy, borrowing a quote from a Minnesota judge: "Punish those people we are afraid of and treat those people we are mad at."
Homicide rate down
This summer's reduction in Youngstown homicides, meanwhile -- one between July 1 and Sept. 7, vs. 10 during the same period last year -- cannot be attributed to prosecution, Patterson said. He credits aggressive GRIP policing in the city, and by the Street Crimes Unit in Boardman, where half the arrests involved city residents.
In the past 10 years, the average number of homicides during that period is seven, Vindicator files show.
Bush said GRIP, which flooded the town with local, state and federal law enforcement, had a profound effect this summer -- it shook everybody up.