Prison camp reopening shelved

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has shelved its plans to reopen a low-security satellite prison camp on the Ohio State Penitentiary grounds to house up to 240 female offenders.

“Through different population strategies, we are able to maintain the current female population in the three existing female facilities,” explained Scott Flowers, ODRC deputy communications chief.

The department has completed routine maintenance to enable future use of the Youngstown camp, he added.

The state prison system had announced last December that it had tentative plans to reopen the OSP camp this summer as a female facility due to a growing number of women entering the state prison system.

Women comprise more than 14 percent of Ohio’s nearly 52,000 state prison inmates.

Female offenders were to perform food service, grounds-keeping and maintenance within the Youngstown camp, Flowers said in December.

The OSP camp housed male offenders before it closed in 2012 and was left vacant to save the state about $1.5 million annually.

The main OSP facility is a top security prison, known as the Supermax.