Ohio Senate OKs bill allowing private prisons to take state inmates

By David Skolnick | December 2, 2016 at 12:02a.m.

COLUMBUS

Legislation that would allow state prisoners to be transferred to private prisons, like the one in Youngstown, has cleared the Ohio Senate.

The Thursday vote on Senate Bill 185 was 26-1, and the legislation heads back to the Ohio House for consideration of Senate amendments.

The original legislation focused on arson offenses, expanding the crime to include unoccupied structures. Language added by senators during committee deliberations would enable the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to contract with private facilities to house state prisoners.

State Sen. John Eklund of Chardon, R-18th, who serves as chairman of the committee that considered the legislation, said the language would allow the state to take advantage of inmate beds left vacant when the federal government ended contracts to house federal prisoners at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown.

“It would be very, very helpful to reduce or work toward reducing the density of the population in our prisons, if DRC could move some prisoners” into “those vacant beds,” Eklund said.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons opted in March 2015 not to renew a contract, which expired May 31, with NOCC on Youngstown’s East Side, resulting in the exodus of about 1,400 of its 2,000 prisoners. Those prisoners were illegal immigrants charged with felonies.

Also, 185 employes were laid off.

Then, four months ago, federal officials announced they no longer routinely would house federal inmates in privately operated prisons because of a rapid decline in the U.S. inmate population nationwide.

The prison, run by CoreCivic of Nashville, currently houses about 580 inmates through a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service that expires at the end of 2018.

“I’m very happy this got through the Senate, and I’m hopeful it will get through the House next week and be signed by the governor,” said Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally. “It means more jobs at the East Side facility if CoreCivic takes advantage of this opportunity. There are 1,400 to 1,500 beds there. Hopefully it would mean 150 to 200 employees coming back to work who lost their jobs. Hopefully it will increase income-tax revenue in 2017, which we can always use.”

Senate Minority Leader Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd, supported the bill after it was amended on the floor. He said the prisoner language could be a benefit to Youngstown.

“We have an empty facility in the Valley,” he said. “We lost a federal contract. If we can put inmates in that facility, we could put more prisoner guards to work. Hopefully they can work with the [Ohio Civil Service Employees Association] and try to get some union prison guards in there. And that will be the next step, working with the mayor, working with Congressman [Tim] Ryan, working with the local officials and OCSEA.”

McNally said he had a conference call recently with Ecklund and CoreCivic officials about the proposal.

“We’re not in a position to speak to plans state officials may be contemplating for managing the state’s inmate population,” said Jonathan Burns, CoreCivic’s director of public affairs.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio was among opponents of the prisoner provisions.

“Ohio prisons are bursting at the seams,” assistant policy director Jocelyn Rosnick said in a released statement. “They’re at 130 percent capacity, housing over 50,000 prisoners in a system built for 38,000. Sending these prisoners to a private prison, whose sole mission is to reap profits from incarceration, does not address the underlying problem in our overcrowded prisons, and may actually make it worse. Ohio prisoners could now be sent to a prison with a troubling history which was deemed unfit for federal prisoners even though the structure and the operation of the prison remain unchanged.”