FEATURED EDITORIAL

No more prisons

1/11/2015

Fueled largely by growing numbers of nonviolent, drug-addicted offenders from rural counties, Ohio’s crowded prison system is at a crossroads: The state must either increase capacity or take the far more sensible, humane, safe, and cost-effective route of finding community-based alternatives to incarceration.

Statistical profiles of the state’s incoming inmates underscore the need for change. They show many low-level offenders with short sentences that community sanctions could handle more effectively, at a fraction of the $25,000 a year it costs to lock up each prisoner. Ohio’s prison system costs $1.5 billion a year.

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Nearly 45 percent of inmates who go to prison each year in Ohio — almost 9,000 people — serve less than a year. That’s not enough time for them to get involved in meaningful programs that would reduce their chances of returning to prison. Expanding drug courts in Ohio would ensure that more offenders who struggle with addiction were sentenced to treatment instead of prison.

Gary Mohr, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, prudently and courageously rules out building more prisons, though he said crowding statewide could force Ohio to reopen a prison camp. Asked about media reports that the state plans to reopen a camp this spring on the grounds of Toledo Correctional Institution, Mr. Mohr said that no decision has been made about Toledo and that DRC is also considering other sites.

“As a state, we’re going to have to make some policy decisions,” Mr. Mohr told The Blade’s editorial page. “Are we going to invest in brick and mortar, spending $1 billion over the next 20 years to build and run another prison, or are we going to invest in people? ... I’m not going to build another prison, not with so many nonviolent people coming into the system.”

The rest of the state should listen to its prison chief. Mr. Mohr recently convened a working group of judges and state politicians to find ways to divert more low-level offenders from prison. He said he would expand halfway houses and other community alternatives to incarceration, and support sentencing reforms that could emerge from the General Assembly this year.

Roughly 30 percent over capacity, Ohio’s prison system holds 50,382 inmates, including 4,049 women. That’s up about 2 percent from August, 2012.

The prison population would be far higher if the recidivism rate in Ohio were not at a record low 27.1 percent, compared to nearly 50 percent nationwide. The state could lower that rate even further by starting drug treatment, including medication-assisted treatment, before prisoners are released and continuing that treatment after they go home.

Amid a statewide epidemic of addiction, one in four of those entering Ohio’s 28 prisons has not been arrested for or convicted of a violent crime. The number of women coming to state prisons rose by 11 percent in 2013 — an uptick that continued last year, Mr. Mohr said.

Overall, the share of inmates entering prison for heroin-related crimes, including possession and theft, has increased more than fivefold, rising from 1.6 percent of admissions in 2000 to 8.3 percent in 2013.

The number of offenders coming from Ohio’s six largest counties, including Lucas, is down, Mr. Mohr said. But a growing number of new prisoners from the rest of the state has more than offset decreases from major urban areas.

Ohio’s goal should not be to manage its prison population. It should be to reduce that population significantly, by acting now to expand cost-effective alternatives to incarceration.