Mahoning sheriff and CCA relationship: It’s over

YOUNGSTOWN — The 14-year business relationship between the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office and the Community Corrections Association will end on the last business day of this month.

Since 1994, CCA has provided academic instruction and life skills training for Mahoning County jail inmates. Its offerings have included substance abuse education, anger management, domestic violence prevention, parenting classes and remedial classroom driving instruction to get driver’s licenses reinstated.

After CCA leaves, the jail will offer the programming for inmates using newly installed satellite reception equipment and software, said Alki Santamas, director of jail services in the sheriff’s office.

In a May 2 letter to the Mahoning County commissioners and county Administrator George J. Tablack, Richard J. Billak announced his agency would terminate its $110,000-a-year contact with the county on May 30.

Billak said the decision stems from the resignation of Pamela Miles, CCA’s jail services director, effective May 28, because of what Billak called the “tenuous” nature of the association’s jail contract and Sheriff Randall A. Wellington’s requests to terminate it.

Under these circumstances, Billak said CCA is “not in a position to recruit and replace her position.” Miles has been with the association for 14 years and served as its jail services director for the past 10 years.

Read more in Thursday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com