Searching for Answers in Ohio
In the town of Lima, local politicians and union members from the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA)/AFSCME Local 11 are wondering why Republican Gov. Bob Taft's administration continues to close state-run prisons while leaving costly, private facilities untouched.
In January, the Lima Correctional Institution (LCI) became the second lockup to be targeted for closure, effective July 1. The Orient Correctional Institution was shut down last year.
But corrections workers and their representatives from Lima have vowed to keep their prison open. Craig Bradford, Chapter 280 president at LCI, told The Lima News that a majority of the members have agreed to collaborate to press local businesses and politicians for support.
The newspaper also reported that state Rep. John Willamowski (R) plans to reintroduce legislation to close the state's two private prisons, the North Coast Correctional Treatment Facility and the Lake Erie Correctional Institution.
OCSEA officials have flooded the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) with cost- cutting alternatives. "The department has never provided us with a good reason for refusing them," says Tim Shafer, president of the union's Rehabilitation and Correction Assembly.
Lima Mayor David Berger echoed those sentiments, telling The News that it's unclear to him why LCI was chosen. He has requested that DRC provide him with a detailed report. "I want to understand more about what were the alternatives that were considered." Republican state Sen. Jim Jordan, who represents Lima, says the department never gave him or his constituents an opportunity to explain the value of LCI.
For Bradford, the reason for closing the prison is payback: "What we have seen from the governor, in my opinion, is just political revenge on this community." Bradford believes the governor targeted the prison because Willamowski has bucked the GOP party line, pushing to close the private prisons.
Declares Shafer: "Staffing in Ohio prisons is mirroring the period of the Lucasville riot," the bloody inmate uprising in 1993 that took the lives of a CO and several inmates. Low staffing levels in the state's prisons contributed to the mayhem. Ironically, DRC Dir. Reginald Wilkinson fears that the state's prison population will increase, but he anticipates closing one more facility.
Ohio Rep. Ted Strickland (D), one of the country's ardent corrections supporters in Congress, wonders if private prisons can handle a similar incident, regardless of staffing levels. Strickland isn't confident that for-profits can call upon the resources — the National Guard, state highway patrol and dozens of COs from other state prisons — that were used to quell the Lucasville disturbance.
Says Shafer: "It is stunning how the lessons of Lucasville have been forgotten."
