Where, in the midst of Ohio's ever-deepening "recession," can a down-and-out citizen be guaranteed not only room and board but free medical care, recreational opportunities and maybe even educational classes and/or psychological counseling?
In prison, of course.
And there are tens of thousands of Ohio inmates who are "beneficiaries" of this kind of jailhouse welfare, miscreants on short-term sentences for non-violent crimes who even prison officials say don't really need to remain incarcerated.
Taxpayers in these hard times are coughing up an average of $24,000 a year to keep these (mostly) men behind bars as the state's prison population approves an all-time high of more than 51,000 felons. And so far, Ohio legislators don't seem to mind: reform legislation has been stuck in the Senate for months, even as the state's financial situation plummets from bad to worse.
Gary Daniels, associate director of ACLU-Ohio, told Licking County Democrats last night that his organization used to lobby for prison and sentencing reform by citing the need for things like judicial equity, humane treatment and rehabilitation. Now, he said, ACLU lobbyists just tells legislators that the bills have come due for all those "tough-on-crime" laws the assembly so enthusiastically approved in better times.
"The State of Ohio is broke - there's no other way to put it," he told members of the county Democratic Club. "So now we just say, 'You just can't afford to do this anymore.' "
Daniels said nobody is promoting the release of thousands of blood-thirsty killers. Take a closer look, he said, at the demographics of Ohio's prison population:
- Ohio's 32 prisons are badly overcrowded, currently at 132 percent of capacity.
- About half of Ohio inmates are serving sentences of one year or less. Rather than being dangerous felons, most of these short-termers are just "people we're basically mad at."
- The largest percentage of non-violent offenders are in for drug-related offenses.
- About 7,000 of all state inmates are older than age 50.
- About 1,700 are in state prison because of parole violations.
- About 800 are in state prison for failure to pay child support.
Last spring, Governor Strickland in his budget recommended measures to reduce the state's prison population by some 6,700 inmates, for an estimated annual saving of $30 million. When the governor's proposal ran into a buzz saw of opposition from prosecutors and Republican lawmakers, it was removed from the budget and recast and resubmitted as S.B. 22 (Seitz).
S.B. 22 among other things would divert lesser offenders (such as child support cases and parole violators) from state prison, use "good time" credits to shorten sentences for good behavior and bring more equity to drug laws (which penalize "crack" users more harshly than up-scale cocaine users, for example).
"Senate Bill 22 offers solutions that save money, ease crowding in a way that doesn't require building new prisons and might even cut down on repeat offenses," the Dispatch editorialized last April. "Reform is not being soft on crime but being smarter in managing it. This year, the prisons will return about 29,000 convicts to their communities, and the public is better protected if those inmates are better equipped to live within the law."
The bill made it out of a Senate committee but now, according to Daniels, is stuck again because Senate Republican leaders don't want to risk a controversial floor vote without assurance the bill will be approved by the Democratic House as well.
But in the House, Democratic Speaker Armond Budish seems ready only to support yet another study of the prison situation, Daniels said.
As for Strickland, he remains "fairly supportive" of reform "but so far has failed to use his bully pulpit to solve the problem," said Daniels.
So like it or not, every Ohio taxpayer is contributing to an "Adopt-a-Con" program (without those heart-warming pictures!) which wardens and prison officials admit is not really necessary or effective.
Meanwhile, reform legislation which could save tens of millions of dollars without eroding public safety remains locked up in the Statehouse because of Ohio's dysfunctional politics. Really, who's getting "conned" here?
-- David Lore
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