“State prisons out of room”

The title of this post is the headline of this article which spotlights realities facing nearly every state in the Union.  This article, however, is from the Cincinnati Enquirer and is focused on Ohio’s prison overcrowding problems.  Here are excerpts:

Southwest Ohio’s two state prisons are crammed with inmates – each at nearly twice the number they were designed to hold. And with the state prison population increasing — it passed 50,000 this year for the first time — prison officials, corrections officers and even the governor wonder how many more people the prison system can handle….

All but six of the state’s 32 prisons — including the two prisons in Warren County — are overcrowded.  “It is a great concern of mine for reasons involving safety and cost,” Gov. Ted Strickland said this month…. But with Ohio’s prison population predicted to hit 70,000 in less than a decade, state officials say they need to figure out how to handle those numbers in a system built for 37,610.

The overcrowding is not just a problem for the convicts — killers and other violent criminals whose comfort is probably low on Ohioans’ priorities. It matters because: Corrections officers watch more inmates. In 2001, the state’s inmate-to-corrections officer ratio was 5.6 inmates to one officer. Today, it’s 6.6 to one.

Rehabilitation programs such as sex offender counseling, anger management and GED classes are stretched and have waiting lists. As a result, some convicts are released — sent home to all 88 counties — with the same problems they arrived with, and are more likely to reoffend….

Whatever the solutions, they won’t be easy or inexpensive, Ohio prison officials say…. Sentencing laws could be revamped. Sixty percent of the state’s convicts are held for a year or less, most on low-level felonies, according to prison officials. Fewer prisoners mean less tax money spent. It costs about $70 a day to house an inmate. At 50,000, that’s $3.5 million a day. If the population climbs, as expected, to 70,000, that daily cost climbs to $4.9 million.