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| Inmates begin exodus from state prisons |
| By Plain Dealer |
| Published: 04/29/2003 |
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The Ohio Parole Board has given release dates to the first of hundreds of prisoners who will be freed as a result of an Ohio Supreme Court decision. That decision in December ordered the board to stop placing prisoners in more-serious offense categories than were warranted by their convictions. As a result, 3,000 to 4,000 inmates are getting new parole hearings, and several hundred are expected to be released, according to Parole Board officials. Since late March, the board has held rehearings for at least 43 inmates, recommending that 38 of them be paroled. Four were told their sentences will be continued, and one is being sent to a halfway house. State prisons Director Reginald Wilkinson, speaking this month at a Kent State University symposium on the economics of criminal-justice policies, revealed that some prisoners who appear on paper to qualify for release will be freed with no hearing at all. 'We see it [the court decision] as a major opportunity to see if people qualify,' he said. 'And if they qualify for release, we want them out.' Wilkinson also surprised some members of the audience by deriding the 'get-tough-on-crime rhetoric of politicians.' Harsher sentences and a prison-building boom that began in the mid-1980s have contributed to exponential increases in prison budgets - Ohio's is now $1.6 billion annually - and a record 2 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails. Ohio has bucked the national trend, Wilkinson noted, by reducing the number of prisoners every year since 1999. Ohio's current prison population is 45,110. Fritz Rauchenberg, former head of research for the Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission, says Wilkinson and the Parole Board have another powerful incentive to release prisoners. 'You've got the [court] decision and you've got the budget crunch,' said Rauchenberg, who now works for the Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services. Parole Board members are also now under orders to make sentencing equity a priority. The training documents also say that 'if an inmate does not present an unreasonable threat or risk to the safety of the community, strong consideration should be given to release at minimum eligibility.' Just a month into the rehearings, the Parole Board has scheduled new hearings for 685 of the 3,000 to 4,000 prisoners whose convictions were miscategorized. It's unclear whether the Parole Board rehearings will free enough prisoners to save the state a significant amount of money. |
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