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50 jobs could be eliminated at Dayton prison in restructuring

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By Lucas Sullivan, Staff Writer 9:33 PM Monday, April 25, 2011

DAYTON — State prison officials plan to eliminate about 50 of 300 jobs at the Dayton Correctional Institute and make it an all-female facility as soon as the end of the year to save taxpayers $18 million and address overcrowding.

After touring the prison earlier in the day, Gary Mohr, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections director, said Monday the jobs will be eliminated through attrition.

“We have a huge budget hole and a crowding problem,” Mohr said. “Doing this will help us fix those things. After fiscal year 2012, we will be structurally balanced.”

The state plans to make DCI an all-female prison, housing no more than 960 women, Mohr said. Roughly 800 male prisoners will be transferred from DCI to other state facilities and the Montgomery County Pre-Release Center will be closed.

Corrections officials said they must eliminate $188 million from the operating budget by June. The plan is part of Gov. John Kasich’s proposal to cut $7.7 billion from the state budget.

It is a drastic revision to Mohr’s original idea to house 1,600 female inmates in both the prison and pre-release center at 1901 S. Gettysburg Ave. He backpedaled from that idea after officials in Cleveland objected to moving about 400 female inmates to Dayton because they would be moved too far from their families.

The state now plans to move the area’s 35 parole officers, who serve about 2,450 parolees, from downtown Dayton to offices in the pre-release center.

The plan is contingent on city commissioners agreeing to revise a 99-year lease with the state signed in 1982 that capped the inmate population at 500 for both facilities. That plan was altered in 1994 to allow for about 300 more inmates.

State officials say it costs $88 a day to house male inmates at the facility, and they can be transferred to facilities where average costs are $44 per day.

It will cost the state about $75 per day to house women at the facility, prisons officials said.

At a community forum two weeks ago, about a dozen residents in southwest Dayton expressed anger toward the plan to increase the population at DCI. Some supported it to save jobs.

Kasich has also proposed privatizing five state prisons. Mohr said private vendors have toured those five facilities in the last two weeks and he expects a few private prisons will open by the end of the year.

To reduce state costs, Mohr also supports the “earned credit” provision that would allow some inmates to reduce their sentences by completing education and other training programs. The proposal excludes sex offenders and the state’s most violent criminals.

Mohr said the proposal would eliminate 530 beds, or spaces, needed to house inmates. The state’s prison system is at 130 percent capacity, he said.

Sentencing reform is also high on Mohr’s cost-savings list because he says it would help save $27 million mainly by diverting as many as 12,000 “low-level” offenders — those sentenced to a year or less in prison — to local community-based programs.

Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. said he and other prosecutors have “misgivings” about Mohr’s proposals.

“Most first-time, low-level offenders do not go to prison,” Heck said through his spokesman. “Repeat offenders that are sent to prison are given a definite term of the number of months they are to serve. If that number is, for example, 10 months, what kind of rehabilitative program would turn their life around in a shorter period of time?”

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