HISTORY OF MAHONING JAIL

HISTORY OF MAHONING JAIL
March 1996: Designed to house 432 inmates, the new 36 million Mahoning County Justice Center opens at 110 Fifth Ave., costing nearly double what taxpayers were told, but nearly tripling the county's inmate holding capacity over the old 150-bed jail in the county administration building at 21 W. Boardman St.
March 1997: The first closed-circuit video arraignment of a jail inmate occurs in the courtroom of Judge Robert Lisotto of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
November 1997: The county's half-percent sales tax, which has been on the books since 1981, is defeated after a repeal campaign by the Accountability Tax Force, which described itself as a local government watchdog group.
October 1999: The funding crunch caused by the loss of sales-tax revenues causes prisoners to be released, reducing the jail to 240 inmates as the sheriff's department lays off 91 deputies.
November 1999: The sales tax, then worth 12 million a year in revenue, passes, allowing the return of the laid-off deputy sheriffs, after the county has lost almost 25 million in sales-tax revenue over two years.
December 2002: As the justice center population exceeds its rated capacity of 432 inmates, county commissioners meet with a panel of judges and lawyers to find ways to curb the inmate population.
November 2003: After the justice center's inmate population swells to more than 800, inmates file a federal class-action lawsuit alleging overcrowding and understaffing violate their constitutional rights.
November 2004: Half-percent sales tax is defeated at the polls.
February 2005: After that defeat, commissioners appropriate 7.6 million to the sheriff's department for the year, 39 percent below its 12.4 million budget for 2004.
March 2005: Inmates win their lawsuit and county common pleas judges devise a prisoner release policy designed to prioritize who needs to be jailed and to keep the justice center at 296 inmates. About 5,700 inmates have been released under that policy over the past two years. The 96-bed misdemeanor jail at 360 W. Commerce St. closes as a result of lack of funding and has been closed ever since.
May 2005: Voters reinstate the half-percent sales tax, but because collections won't be received until Jan. 1, 2006, the commissioners borrow 7.34 million to keep deputies in the jail through the end of the year.
December 2006: Vincent M. Nathan, a jail expert appointed by the federal court, says crowding is the cause of constitutional violations at the lockup, where he says conditions are conducive to a mass disturbance, and he tells a panel of three federal judges that only a prisoner release order capping the jail at 288 inmates will remedy the problem.
February 2007: Youngstown and Mahoning County officials reach an agreement giving the city an allotment of up to 221 jail beds and allowing for the return of up to 150 revenue-generating federal prisoners, full reopening of the justice center (the main jail) and reopening of the misdemeanor jail by Aug. 1. The jail last housed federal inmates in late 2004.
Source: Vindicator files