Ohio Looks for Ways to Curb Inmate Influx

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio’s prison population is expected to increase 37 percent over the next 10 years and officials are considering ways to address overcrowding and prevent crime.

Focusing on education in elementary and high schools is a top priority as state officials realize that they can either spend about $9,000 a year educating a student or $52,000 a year to keep someone in solitary confinement in the state penitentiary.

State officials claim that by creating more preventive community and prison programs, they can help reduce prison populations and keep people out of jail, especially in low-income areas.

In addition, officials would like to see more treatment programs become available to felons with substance- and alcohol-abuse problems, and those who suffer from mental illness; they belong in treatment centers, not prison beds, according to officials.

Officials blame the population increase on the state’s poor economy, as well as overcrowded treatment programs that are too full to accept new offenders.

The jump in crime and the full treatment programs and community-based correctional facilities leave judges with few options besides incarceration when sentencing felons.

The state currently houses 47,600 inmates in prisons that were built to hold 38,000.

Based on a report performed by a consultant from JFA Institute in Washington the state could see nearly 665,000 felons placed in state custody over the next decade.