To house, or not to house inmates? It’s the question

Ohio’s top corrections officer has painted a bleak picture of the state’s prisons and is threatening to institute an emergency release program if the General Assembly doesn’t come up with a cure for what ails the system.

Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Director Terry Collins says that last month, the 32 prisons held 51,062 inmates. The lock-ups are designed to house 38,665.

Using any standard, 32 percent over capacity is overcrowding. And that, as Ohio well knows, is a recipe for disaster. The 1993 Lucasville prison was hit by an 11-day strike that claimed the life of one guard and nine inmates. Overcrowding was cited as one of the causes of the riot.

But it isn’t just the danger that lurks which is cause for concern. Health care, food and manpower costs increase as the population rises.

What is to be done? Collins says the state must either spend more than $1 billion to build new prisons — in light of Ohio’s budget crisis such spending is out of the question — or the General Assembly must pass legislation to reform sentencing laws.

In 1996, the legislature pass the “truth in sentencing” act that required inmates to serve the time imposed by judges and required judges to sentence inmates to a specific number of years, not a range.

Sentencing reforms

Gov. Ted Strickland has proposed a series of sentencing reforms that could result in budget savings. The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spends $1.8 billion a year and accounts for one in every four state employees.

Collins is recommending that non-violent, shorter-stay criminals be assigned to treatment programs, community settings, or electronic monitoring.

In addition, the governor has proposed a plan to restore up to seven days a month that inmates could shave off their sentences by participating in educational, vocational, employment, substance abuse and other prison programming. A Senate bill would restore five days.

The earned-time program would target low-level, non-violent felons. Sexually oriented offenders could not participate.

What is telling about Ohio’s inmate population is that of the 15,058 prisoners serving a year or less, 36 percent were convicted for drug-related offenses and 32 percent for property offenses.

In his plan to reduce the cost of prison operations, the governor would invest more money in electronic monitoring, day reporting, work release and other alternative community programs.

Regardless, Ohio’s budget crisis — about $2 billion has to be slashed from the spending plan now before the General Assembly — makes the situation all the more urgent.

Given the problem of overcrowding, Ohio is sitting atop a tinderbox.

As Collins puts it, “The more people you have in a confined space, they start losing personal space. Regardless of whether you’re an offender, John Q. Citizen, or a multimillionaire, we don’t like somebody in our face.”

The General Assembly must act quickly. A riot could well be a misspoken word away.