ACLU bashes Supermax policies
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio has called for an independent investigation of restrictions, including solitary confinement of inmates, at the Ohio State Penitentiary, known as the Supermax, on the city’s East Side.
The ACLU is asking State Sen. Cliff Hite, R-Findlay, chairman of the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, to launch the probe of the prison, which houses 447 inmates, most of them at the maximum-security level.
“As a just society, we have a responsibility to ensure that our prisons treat those incarcerated fairly and humanely,” said Mike Brickner, senior policy director at the ACLU of Ohio.
“There is nothing rehabilitative about solitary confinement,” Brickner said, adding that excessive isolation harms inmates’ mental health and makes them “less stable and more desperate.”
OSP prisoners have been on a hunger strike since last month to protest what the ACLU says are “harsh policies” resulting from a December assault on a corrections officer.
Those policies include limits on religious activities, curtailed recreation and elimination of counseling and GED instruction, the civil-liberties advocate organization said.
As of March 19, 30 inmates were on hunger strike, but only five were on hunger strike Monday, said Laura Gardner, Supermax public-information officer.
Scott Flowers, deputy communications chief for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said state prison officials are reviewing, and will respond to, the protest letter they received from the ACLU concerning OSP.