The Warren Tribune Chronicle reports, “State Prisons Face Budget Cuts,” that the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction is facing budget cuts at a time when Ohio has more prisoners than ever, holding 33 percent more inmates than its facilities were intended to hold, and when the whole system is facing budget cuts in the next biennium.

Excerpts from the article:

• Ohio’s prison system is at its highest inmate level ever, with 51,000 inmates being housed across the state in prisons that had been designed to hold 38,300. Warren’s state prison, Trumbull Correctional Institution, is at 148 percent of capacity, holding 1,340 inmates. The Leavittsburg-area prison was designed to hold 902.
• Adding to a bleak situation, earlier this month, Strickland released a state budget ”worst-case scenario,” pointing out that the state is facing a $7.3 billion deficit in the next two years based on current tax revenue projections, which are heading downward as all major economics indicators have plummeted.
• Without Washington’s help, state agencies would need to cut 25 percent off their current funding levels if the state wants to preserve Medicaid, a tax reduction and continue making debt payments, Strickland said.
• ”We are facing historic times with the state of Ohio,” Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections Director, Terry J. Collins said. ”We have made no decisions on anything at this particular point in time. I have talked to legislators about various potential changes. It comes down to a pretty simple theory.” That theory includes looking at other forms of punishment, including alternate sentencing programs, GPS tracking with ankle bracelets, halfway houses and simply accepting the fact that not everyone has to be in prison to be punished, Collins said.
• ”There’s only so much you can cut,” state Rep. Tom Letson, D-Warren, said. ”But revenue is down, and we’re trying to cut without increasing any taxes.” ”It’s almost impossible to close any (prison) without setting people free,” state Sen. Robert Hagan said.
• The two officials are stuck in the middle of the bleak budget scenario that already has given way to threats of closing state parks and raising college tuition. ”We won’t get the budget until February, and I heard 5 to 7.5 billion has to be cut,” Letson said.
• Hagan said across-the-board cuts from 10 to 25 percent certainly would mean a long, hard look to the prison system, where inmates require between $26,000 to $52,000 a year to remain behind bars.
• Some officials have called for the elimination of 5,237 positions at the state prisons department, including corrections and parole officers. Ohio also would close six institutions at a time when prisons already are crowded. Many treatment and job programs for inmates would be cut. And the trickle-down effect also could mean cuts for alternative sentencing programs such as Northeast Ohio Community Alternative Program (NEOCAP), located in Warren.
• Hagan said it’s more likely officials in the prison system, which includes 32 institutions and two privately run prisons, will make the call on who gets laid off and who gets released. The system also includes Trumbull Correctional Institution, one of the more modern prisons in the state. ”You risk the chance of more or increased violence in the prisons if they’re overcrowded,” Hagan said.
• He said the state most likely will depend on major increases in the area of house arrest and electronic monitoring of inmates removed from prisons.”And those inmates have to be first-time and nonviolent offenders,” he said.