Too many prisoners

Too many prisoners

Toledo Blade: Ohio’s prisons house nearly 51,000 inmates — one-third more than they were built to handle. If current trends in state corrections policy continue, that population will grow by another 3,000 prisoners within four years.

But these trends will not continue indefinitely. Either the state will face costly penalties for its overcrowded prisons, or it will have to spend an estimated $500 million it doesn’t have to build and run new ones.

So it is time for Gov. John Kasich’s administration and the General Assembly to move from a wasteful and ineffective get-tough stance on corrections policy to a get-smart approach.

Proposed legislation has emerged from new research by the Council of State Governments, the U.S. Justice Department, and the Pew Center on the States. It discards the obsolete lock-’em-all-up mentality in favor of “justice reinvestment,” reflected in more-effective treatment of low-level and nonviolent offenders, better use of community-based corrections programs, and stronger supervision of felons on probation to reduce the odds of their return to prison.

Ohio needs to abandon the expensive fiction that locking up offenders indiscriminately makes us safer.