Ohio prison population lower than officials predicted

Ohio’s inmate population is growing more slowly than state officials expected just a year ago, thanks in part to a dropping crime rate and new efforts to find alternatives to prison.

Civil liberties activists offered cautious praise that the state is expecting fewer prisoners in the next few years, though they said that Ohio’s inmate population remains far over what the system is designed to accommodate.

Last year, state prison officials expected the state’s inmate population to hit a record 51,601 by July of 2014, then continue growing to 53,484 by 2019.

Ohio’s 28 prisons have a total capacity of only 38,579 inmates, and the state’s prisons director raised the prospect that the state would have to release inmates early just to free up cells for incoming criminals.

But as of January 2015, Ohio held a total of 50,583 inmates — nearly 1,000 fewer prisoners than what the state expected last summer. And revised projections released by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction last December anticipate Ohio will have 51,808 prisoners by 2019 and 52,844 inmates by 2023.

Prison crowding is an issue of enormous importance to the Cleveland area, where residents and leaders already struggle to reintegrate disproportionate numbers of inmates back into society and to prevent them from committing new crimes.

DRC spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said there are a number of reasons the projected increase in prisoners hasn’t been as high as previously thought, including:

• An unexpected 3-percent drop in new inmates in 2014. Smith said the decrease came because the state’s violent crime rate fell 8 percent in 2013 and because state grants to county courts have encouraged probation and prison alternatives.
• The current state budget gives an additional $12.7 million in 2014 and 2015 to add about 400 new beds at halfway houses and community-based correctional facilities.
• A new state law, Senate Bill 143, has made it easier to transfer inmates into a transitional control program.

Smith noted that the state’s prison population projection assumes that Ohio’s crime, imprisonment, and recidivism rates will all remain at current levels for the next few years. The forecast also assumes state legislators won’t pass any new laws affecting how many people go to prison or how long they stay there.

Click here to read more of this story.