MAHONING COUNTY Jail could get new staffing levels

A three-judge panel might design an inmate-release mechanism.
YOUNGSTOWN -- The fact-finding special master chosen to alleviate Mahoning County jail overcrowding will likely propose a guard-to-inmate ratio, the county prosecutor says.
"With a guard-to-inmate ratio, there will have to be an inmate release mechanism," Prosecutor Paul J. Gains said. "That could mean closing off some floors at the jail."
The high-rise main jail on Fifth Avenue is permitted by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to hold 564 inmates. The misdemeanant jail on Commerce Street is designed to hold 96.
Gains said it's speculation as to what the special master will do, but he has no doubt that the jails' population, now around 630, will be drastically reduced because of imminent deputy layoffs. The first inmates to go will be federal detainees (about 80) because Sheriff Randall A. Wellington is not mandated to house them, the prosecutor said.
The sheriff has about 226 employees; about 186 are deputies.
He has said that with the layoff of 50 deputies March 27, 150 inmates must be released. With the layoff of 90 more deputies soon after that, the jail would have to be down 540 inmates, he said.
List of names
This week, Gains, Wellington and Commissioners Anthony T. Traficanti, David Ludt and John A. McNally IV will meet with Columbus lawyers who defended the county against an inmates' class-action lawsuit and lost. The group must submit to U.S. District Judge David D. Dowd Jr. by March 21 the names of five candidates to serve as a special master. The opposing side, Akron lawyers who won the class-action lawsuit, will also submit five names.
Gains said because the meeting involves litigation, it will not be open to the public. The prosecutor said the special master will likely not be from this area but will be someone who has served as a special master.
Sometimes called a fact finder, the special master will recommend ways to protect inmates' constitutional rights. Judge Dowd has the final say.
"It's a shame that the voters were not interested in running a constitutionally sound jail," Gains said, referring to the failed half-cent sales tax that helped fund the sheriff's department. "This is bad, really bad."
Gains said Judge Dowd has the authority, with two other federal judges, to design a release mechanism. Before that happens, the sheriff is trying to get local judges to release inmates to alternative sentences (such as house arrest) or transfer them to jails in other counties. He also wants the judges to stop sending him more inmates.
"There's a high possibility that if the [local] judges don't agree on a release mechanism it will be out of their hands," Gains said. "The three-judge panel will do it."
At any time, 70 to 80 percent of the main jail's inmates are not serving a sentence but awaiting court action. The national average is about 50 percent.
Special master's duties
Columbus attorney Mark Landes, who represents the county, said a qualified candidate for special master could have law enforcement background or be a retired judge. He said the person chosen, who will be paid an hourly fee comparable to a lawyer's, must be "someone who can play down the middle, call balls and strikes."
Landes said the special master will do what Judge Dowd wants to be done. He believes the special master will likely first set up a meeting between the county's and the inmates' lawyers to see if a remedy can be worked out to bring the jail in line with inmates' constitutional rights.
Landes doesn't think the special master will suggest to Judge Dowd that the sheriff be given the budget he requested for this year. The sheriff asked for $16.9 million but commissioners allocated $7.5 million.
The Columbus lawyer said the goal is to have a facility that is operationally sound and fiscally responsible.
"The special master can say you can't have the jail open unless you staff it in a certain way," Landes said. "It may be in the county's best interest to give the sheriff more money."
He said the special master will define what is constitutional and what has to be done to bring the jail into compliance and then tell the county to figure out how to make it happen. "It puts it back on the commissioners and the sheriff," he said.
Mahoning County jail will always need to house inmates -- that's not going to go away, Landes said.
Robert Armbruster and Thomas Kelley, the Akron lawyers who represent inmates, won a similar civil rights lawsuit in the early 1990s. The lawsuit resulted in a federal consent decree governing the guard-to-inmate ratio at the jail; the decree was lifted in November 2001.
The mechanism that set prisoners free then ranged from those who couldn't make bond on misdemeanor charges pending trial on up to those who had served 50 percent of their sentence.