News Release
News impacting public employee union members

Blackwell joins ranks of Lima prison proponents - three years late

For immediate release: Sept. 1, 2006
Contact: Peter Wray 614-865-2606; 614-906-1049

COLUMBUS – The state’s prison employee union said it welcomed gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell’s support for reopening the Lima Correctional Institution, but wondered why it took him years to stake out a position on the facility. The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, which represents nearly 10,000 prison workers, however, warned that even reopening the prison would only go partway in relieving overcrowding and understaffing in the corrections system.

“Blackwell is arriving at this party about three years late,” said Andy Douglas, executive director of the union. “He should save his breath talking to the people in Lima and instead be talking to those in the Statehouse who decided to close the facility. Lima-area citizens and their elected leaders have known since 2003 that closing LCI was a horrible idea.  It was also a horrible idea to close the Orient prison in central Ohio in 2002. It’s curious that when we were in the midst of our tooth-and-nail fight to keep those prisons open, Blackwell was remarkably silent."

Douglas said that union officials yesterday sent a letter to Governor Taft outlining a sharp increase in the dangers in the state prison system. In the letter, Douglas and union president Ron Alexander noted that the prison population had jumped to 46,807, its highest level since 2000 including a 7.5 percent increase in the last 17 months alone.

As a result, the entire prison system is housing 31 percent more inmates than it was designed to safely handle.

“The inmate population in one prison, the Lorain Correctional Institution, grew by 28 percent in one year and is operating at 263 percent of capacity,” they wrote.

“Equally alarming is the prison staffing level. Although the number of inmates has increased by 1,574 from a year ago, the number of Corrections Officers has actually declined by 112. The decline is even more startling if we look back to another time when population levels were similar. DRC statistics show that in July 2000 (46,537 inmates) the department operated with over 1,000 more correction officers (14 percent) than today.

“One key result is the inmate-to-CO ratio has risen from 5.6 to 1 to 6.6 to 1. This benchmark is fast approaching the dangerous pre-Lucasville level,” Douglas and Alexander wrote, noting General Revenue Fund appropriations for the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections had been reduced by $151 million since 2001.

Douglas and Alexander urged Taft to take quick action. “The current situation in the prison system is explosive. We remain concerned that unless some timely relief is undertaken a tragedy will occur,” they wrote.

OCSEA represents 36,000 state employees and other government workers and is an affiliate of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

See Related

OCSEA letter to Gov. Taft from OCSEA President Ronald Alexander and Executive Director Andy Douglas