OCSEA Turning Back Privatization
Memo to private-prison proponents in the Buckeye State: The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA)/ AFSCME Local 11 will fight you every inch of the way. They’ve exposed the failings of the first state-run prison, and built a strong case for de-privatizing it.
On Feb. 29, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) opened the prison – the North Coast Correctional Treatment Facility – in Grafton. It’s a day the department and CiviGenics, the company that manages the facility, will not soon forget. That’s because OCSEA has mobilized strong community opposition to the venture by means of an extensive media and outreach program.
The 522-bed, minimum-security prison for inmates with felony DUIs and other substance-abuse problems, appears to be more than Lorain County bargained for. On May 4, about 50 North Coast inmates surrounded the warden on the yard and refused an order to put their shirts back on.
DRC and CiviGenics dismissed the so-called “Shirts Rebellion” as frivolous and didn’t tell nearby law enforcement officials about it. But Mike Hill, an OCSEA staff representative and a CO, says it reminded him of activities that occurred before the escape of six inmates from a privately owned and operated prison in Youngstown in 1998.
Tom Smith, the Grafton city council president, was shaken by a videotape of the event. “The inmates were definitely in control for the whole evening,” Smith told a local newspaper. “It raised a lot of questions with me. They were just not going to do what the warden told them to do. The guards were just being passive and letting the inmates do what they wanted to do. It was really eye-opening.”
County Sheriff Martin Mahony concurred when he told a reporter: “I think something like that happening should be of concern to the people that are operating the facility. [The inmates] were showing some defiance for the rules, but with the number of inmates, there was potential for it to escalate. I would be concerned.”
Five of the inmates were transferred to the Lorain Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison situated across the street from North Coast.
The problems with North Coast don’t end there. In fact, OCSEA has a laundry list of misdeeds and mismanagement by the DRC and CiviGenics. The union recently won a grievance after an arbitrator prohibited DRC from using state employees to train workers in the private company in procedures such as unarmed self-defense.
At that arbitration hearing, department officials, testifying under oath, had to come clean on other issues. They admitted to failing to accomplish drug testing and background checks on staff and inmates; to leaving class-A tools like shovels and lawn mowers scattered around the yard; and to having a high turnover rate among North Coast personnel.
In less than six months of operation, CiviGenics is on its third warden after firing the first two. One of those dismissed, Larry Seidner, has since said that the prison was open too early. He has cited glaring weaknesses: malfunctioning locks on doors to inmate housing units; incomplete dental and optometry offices; lack of storage space for hazardous materials; and no cuff ports in the infirmary and segregation cells.
OCSEA has a lawsuit pending against privately operated or state-owned prisons in Ohio. “What we’re basically doing is hitting them anywhere we can,” says Hill. “It’s a full-open barrage against them.”
In May, the union picketed the DRC in Columbus. “We stayed for two hours,” Hill recalls. “We left blowing the horns so loud that hardly anybody could work. We had good press coverage, too.
“Our goal is to de-privatize Grafton. The state paid for it and ought to operate it.”
