EXCLUSIVE REPORT
The Journal-News examined state records and pored over reports on Ohio’s prison system to bring you this exclusive story.
Serious assaults on the roughly 12,000 staff members working in the Ohio prison system are on the rise during the past five years, according to records from Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Attacks that require prison staffers to be transported to a nearby hospital have more than doubled from 19 serious assaults in 2007 to 44 in 2012. And few of the inmates who assault a prison worker will ever be convicted for their alleged crimes.
Overall, the number of reported assaults and harassment, ranging from sexual to non-injury, on staff members has stayed steady from 2007 to 2012, the most recent data available from the state.
DRC officials say a new prison structure launched in 2011 that mostly isolates violent and habitual prisoners from first-time, non-violent offenders and those inmates ready to re-enter into society, has reduced overall prison violence.
But members of the Ohio Service Employee Association, the union that represents correctional officers and other prison staff, argue the same rehabilitation program has left only a handful of Ohio’s 28 prisons and their workers, to deal with the most aggressive offenders.
“That’s an easy answer — there’s definitely been an increase, ” said Phil Morris, the chapter president for the union and a correction officer at Lebanon Correctional Institution. Morris describes Lebanon as one of the “big four” institutions that, along with prisons located in Mansfield, Toledo and Lucasville, tends to oversee the state’s most serious offenders.
“When you compile all these guys into a handful of institutions, your violence is going to increase,” Morris said.
‘Disturbing patterns’
Staffers working in Warren County’s prisons, the Lebanon Correctional Institution and Warren Correctional Institution, account for roughly 20 percent of the 124 serious injury attacks reported in the state prison system from 2010 to 2012, a Journal-News analysis of state data found. Both facilities are home to thousands of “close security” prisoners, inmates that are just below maximum security levels.
In 2012, six staffers working at Warren were seriously injured in an inmate attack while four Lebanon staffers were seriously injured. Overall, Lebanon reported the second-most physical assaults on staff in the state from 2010 to 2012.
The Southern Ohio Correctional Institution in Lucasville, which quarters more maximum security prisons than any other state facility, lead the state with 200 assaults total; 37 of them physical attacks.
Morris believes the state’s new push to segregate prison populations by their level of violence has made some prisons a significantly more dangerous place to work. He also attributes the understaffed and overcrowded nature of the prison to an increase in violent attacks.
“Unfortunately, it’s our people that get caught in the cross hairs,” Morris said of his co-workers. “You’ve got to reduce the prison population and you’ve got to spread out the more violent felons.”
An inspection report of the Lebanon Correctional Institution issued by the state’s bi-partisan Correctional Institution Inspection Committee in May described the “violent prison” as over capacity by roughly 600 inmates and “in need of improvement” for safety and security.
The same report, however, praised the prison’s new warden, who took over in August of 2012, and noted high morale among staff.
“The facility has made significant improvements in comparison to the prior inspection and is on a positive path for the future,” the report stated.
The committee has raised concerns in other state facilities about attacks. In August, the committee noted “significant challenges” and “record turnover in staff” at the Toledo Correctional Institution. The Toledo prison, as part of the state’s move new prison management system, began accepting maximum security last February and has experienced a 73 percent increase in inmate on staff assaults from 2010 to 2012.
In another report presented in 2012 to the Ohio State Assembly by DRC Director Gary Mohr, officials expressed concern for the rising trend in assaults across Ohio’s prisons. Officials with the DRC referred all questions for this story to a spokeswoman.
“For both (inmate on inmate) and (inmate on staff) the patterns over the past six years are disturbing,” the report read.
“Assaults on staff resulting in serious injury to one or more staff members is a significant problem at the present time with regard to our efforts in reducing institutional violence,” the report continued.
Overall violence on staffers, however, has decreased from a high of every 23 staffers per 1,000 inmates assaulted in 2008 to 21.78 staffers in 2012. The inmate population fluctuated between roughly 49,000 to 51,000 between those years.
Although specific prison assault data for 2013 isn’t yet available, overall violence continued to decline by five percent in 2013, Ricky Seyfang, a spokeswoman for the department said. Although union representatives challenge the new prison management system, where inmates are treated differently based on their level of violence and willingness to reintegrate into the system, Seyfang said it’s the reason for violence reduction in state prisons. The program gives well-behaved inmates more access to job training, for example.
Ohio Sen. Bill Coley, who represents parts of Butler County, said he supports the state’s new approach to prison population management. Coley said he’s hopeful the program will keep Ohio’s record low 28 percent recidivism rate.
“One of the things (prisons director Gary Mohr) has taught me is that you have to have people focused on the future,” Coley said. “It makes for a better transition back to a life on the outside.”
Rarely convicted
Most inmates who attack a prison worker will never get any extra time added to their prison stay.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol helps to investigate prison assaults and those cases get forwarded to that prison’s county prosecutor for prosecution. Only 28 percent of those inmates, however, are tried and convicted for the crime within the county court system, a state analysis of prison assault prosecutions found in 2012.
Wardens typically meet with county prosecutors to discuss inmate prosecution, Seyfang said.
“In the end, however, we respect the fact that prosecutors have the same strain on their resources that we have,” Seyfang wrote in an email.
The Warren County Prosecutor’s Office handled 22 felony assault cases stemming from inmate on staff assaults in 2012 and 10 in 2013, Prosecutor David Fornshell said. That means the office prosecuted more than half of the physical assaults on staff that took place in both of the county’s prisons.
“If there’s a case we’re not prosecuting, there’s definitely an evidentiary reason we’re not doing it,” Fornshell said. “I recognize that these people are out there, whether they’re correction officers or staff who work in the cafeteria, they’re significantly outnumbered by the inmates.”
The state legislature is also taking steps to increase penalties for inmates who attack prison employees.
Last summer a provision in the state budget bill raised the penalty for assault on a DRC or Department of Youth Services employee from a fifth-degree felony to a third-degree felony, which carries longer prison stays.
Proposed legislation, backed by a group of Ohio Senate Republicans, would close a loophole that allows some inmates and juvenile offenders to avoid serving time for assaults on DRC or DYS employees.
Sen. Bob Peterson, who has state prisons in his southwest Ohio district that includes Clinton and Fayette counties, said he sponsored the legislation last summer after hearing correction officers testify about their own assaults. The inmates who assaulted the officers didn’t get additional jail time because the they were being transferred out of the juvenile offender system, he said.
“There are some circumstances where there could be very little consequences when someone assaults a correction officer,” Peterson said. “It’s certainly an obvious flaw that we need to correct.”
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