“We are a good 30-plus (corrections officers) short. We do have violence. The food service is causing problems,” Morris said.
Lebanon is a high security prison where gangs and violence have been a chronic problem, he said. “It’s not new but the department is not doing anything to address it. We literally have to beg to get more officers hired.”
Christopher Mabe, president of the OCSEA, which represents DRC employees, said the security problems exist across the prison system.
“We’re talking about escapes, we’re talking about a rise in suicides, we’re talking about 400 less corrections officers than we had during Lucasville and 50,000 inmates in the system,” he said, referring to the 1993 riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville that resulted in the inmates controlling the prison for 11 days and the deaths of nine inmates and a corrections officer.
“We’re talking about propping up contractors inside our institutions,” Mabe said. “We need people on the ground to deal with incidences inside our prison system.”
DRC has had a number of high profile problems in the past 18 months:
- Sept. 11: Inmate T.J. Lane, the Chardon High School killer, escaped along with two other inmates from the Allen Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima. All three were recaptured the following day.
- April-July: The state fined contractor Aramark $272,200 for sanitation issues, food shortages and staffing issues related to its two-year, $110 million contract to feed DRC prisoners and banned 113 Aramark employees from the prisons for various violations;
- Jan. 16: the execution of inmate Dennis McGuire took 26 minutes using a previously untested mix of lethal drugs;
- Sept. 3, 2013: Inmate Ariel Castro, who kidnapped and raped three young women for years in his Cleveland house, committed suicide while in protective custody at the Correctional Reception Center near Columbus;
- Aug. 4, 2013: Death Row inmate Billy Slagle committed suicide at Chillicothe Correctional Institution days before his scheduled execution and without knowing there was new information in his case that could have led to a stay.
DRC, which has a $1.54 billion annual budget, employs 11,873 workers and incarcerates 50,560 inmates in a system designed to hold 35,000 prisoners.
DRC spokeswoman JoEllen Smith issued a written statement that said in part: “DRC has the same goal as the union, which is to operate safe and secure prisons. We believe the union has mischaracterized the willingness of DRC to work to resolve issues over privatization. The agency has and will continue to follow the collective bargaining agreement between the State of Ohio and OCSEA. We are actively involved with OCSEA in collective bargaining arbitration proceedings over the outsourcing of food service operations.”
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