Ohio’s heroin and opioid epidemic has rocked the state’s criminal justice system, flooding its crowded prisons and burdened courts with addicts and minor drug offenders who would be more effectively — and inexpensively — treated in their communities. Of the more than 20,000 people entering Ohio’s prisons each year, the share of inmates admitted for opioid- and heroin-related crimes, mostly possession and theft, has increased more than 400 percent in the past 13 years.

Moving Ohio to a more cost-effective, rational, and humane criminal justice system will take, among other things, more drug courts, sentencing and code reforms, and a significant shift of resources from state prisons to community-based treatment programs.

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Such reforms, in general, have a powerful champion in Gary Mohr, the chief of Ohio’s $1.5-billion-a-year prison system. The director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) has made it clear that he wants fewer nonviolent, low-level drug offenders sent to his 28 prisons. With more than 50,000 inmates, Ohio’s prison system already is 30 percent over capacity.

At a recent symposium in Columbus on addiction and the criminal justice system, Mr. Mohr noted that building and running one prison for 20 years costs a staggering $1 billion.

“I believe those resources are best allocated to the people here,” he told hundreds of local drug treatment providers. “If we put nonviolent folks in evidence-based programs in the community, they are better off. You will do a better job than I will do in turning their lives around.”

That’s excellent advice from an unexpected source. The rest of the state should take it.

Numbers tell the story

Statistical profiles of the state’s incoming inmates underscore the need for change. They show many low-level offenders with short sentences that community-based sanctions could handle more effectively at a fraction of the $25,000 a year it costs to imprison them.

More than 5,000 people a year go to prison in Ohio for drug crimes, mostly low-level offenses. Almost the same number of incoming prisoners — most of them addicts — have never been arrested for, or convicted of, a violent offense.

Moreover, nearly 45 percent of those 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.

Incarcerating minor drug offenders is costing Ohio tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. Ohio taxpayers get little return on that investment, as untreated addicts return to their communities unequipped to cope with their disease.

Stark differences in judges, as well as access to local treatment programs, have created appalling disparities in how justice is handed out to addicts and nonviolent drug offenders in Ohio.

Two cases involving heroin addicts, portrayed today in a front-page column by The Blade’s deputy editorial page editor, Jeff Gerritt, show what Ohio is doing right and what it continues to do wrong.

In Hardin County, Kaylee Morrison, 28, was just sentenced to four years in prison, where she will cost taxpayers $100,000 while failing to get the help she needs to manage her addiction. In neighboring Marion County, Clayton Wood, 29, was sentenced to drug court, where he gets treated in his community while working full time and paying taxes.

Adult felony drug courts, which combine treatment with more-frequent but shorter sanctions, offer an excellent alternative. Residents of every Ohio county should have access to one. Still, such specialized dockets, with assigned probation officers, exist in fewer than a third of Ohio’s 88 counties.

Lucas County, the center of the state’s fourth largest metropolitan area, does not have an adult drug court. As an urban area with 440,000 people, struggling with an opioid and heroin epidemic, it needs one now. Lucas County Sheriff John Tharp, Common Pleas Judge Stacy Cook, and Carol Contrada, president of the Lucas County Board of Commissioners, all support a specialized drug docket.

With the help of the Ohio Supreme Court, which certifies specialty dockets, local drug courts aren’t difficult, or costly, to set up. Lucas County Common Pleas judges should work with county commissioners, as they prepare their 2015 budget, to plan for a local drug court. The state could help by providing, in its next two-year budget, financial incentives to expand local drug courts around Ohio.

Need for broader options

With or without drug courts, judges need sufficient resources in their communities to treat drug addiction and serve as cost-effective alternatives to incarceration. Such programs give judges more sentencing options.

Here again, the state could help, first by increasing the money set aside for the Smart Ohio Plan, which helps counties run community-based alternatives to prison. This year, DRC will provide as much as $10 million for such initiatives, including local treatment programs.

So far, DRC has awarded Smart Ohio grants to 29 counties. The state is measuring the success of those programs. It ought to provide the resources to replicate and expand programs that have shown success.

Recovering addicts and former prisoners could help. In an interview with The Blade’s editorial page, Mr. Mohr said Ohio and other states are experiencing severe shortages of drug treatment providers, especially with the expansion of Medicaid.

Mr. Mohr suggested the state could alleviate the problem by training and certifying certain soon-to-be-released inmates to become drug counselors. Such former prisoners would possess not only an academic understanding of addiction, but also the life experiences to become excellent counselors and mentors.

Nearly 10,000 offenders leave Ohio’s prisons each year with an intense history of addiction. As part of its re-entry efforts, DRC must ensure they are linked to treatment programs immediately after they’re released, including support groups and medication-assisted treatment.

Finally, the administration of Gov. John Kasich and the Ohio Supreme Court, through symposiums and other outreach effects, should educate all Ohio judges on how addiction works. Likewise, the General Assembly must make sure that Ohio’s legal code doesn’t mandate inappropriate or ineffective penalties and sanctions for offenses that are rooted in addiction.

The growing number of addicts and low-level drug offenders in Ohio’s costly and crowded prisons is a grim reminder that the state’s criminal justice system is failing to deal effectively, and humanely, with its opioid and heroin epidemic.

Changing course will require a far greater understanding of addiction among those who make and execute Ohio’s laws and criminal code, and a seismic shift in resources and investments from the state’s prisons to its struggling communities.

First Published September 7, 2014, 4:00 a.m.