Kasich Communication Department
Chillicothe Gazette...
Prisons shift culture to provide safer environment, meaningful programs for inmates
Jul. 22, 2012 

After spending more than three years of his post-adolescent formative years locked up, Daniel Ervin is just four months away from heading home to South Charleston. 

Ervin, 25, shakes his head a little as he gives a basic explanation of what brought him to Chillicothe: hanging out on the streets with the wrong people and breaking into people’s homes. 

“It just caught up to me,” he said. 

In July 2009, he was sent to prison for three years and six months on charges of breaking and entering and burglary in Clark County. His prison voyage took him to Noble Correctional Institution in Caldwell and to Dayton Correctional Institution before he arrived at Ross Correctional Institution in Chillicothe to work on the farm a year ago. 

“It’s a learning experience. I was raised on a farm, but I never really learned things. I never had time because of running on the street,” Ervin said. 

During the past year, Ervin said he’s learned responsibility and how to work. He’s learned things he ignored when his father tried to teach him, things he hopes will help him be a good father to his own son, who was 1 when Ervin went to prison and will celebrate his fifth birthday the day Ervin is released. 

“I work out here five days a week, 14 hours a day. When I get home, I’m going to already be prepared for that (to work),” Ervin said. 

Although Ervin doesn’t know much about the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections’ new three-tier system, he’s saying the things Director Gary Mohr hopes more inmates will leave saying. The restructure of the system’s culture is geared toward reducing violence, rewarding good behavior and increasing opportunities that will provide the skills needed to be successful after release. 

Mohr sees changes to the system as being critical to reducing recidivism and truly rehabilitating inmates. The three-tier system has been in development for about 18 months and implementation at the prisons began about six months ago with training employees. The first control unit was finalized in Mansfield earlier this year and the reintegration units will be completed by fall. 

“What we observed 18 months ago was a significant level of violence ...The reality of people being afraid was negating so much of the positive activity,” Mohr said. 

Upon Mohr’s appointment as director, he said 1,300 inmates across the state were in a solitary cell at their own request. 

Mohr knew a change was needed to get the violence under control. The result is a system-wide change in culture based on the idea of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow’s theory of motivation essentially says before a person can address higher needs, such as rehabilitation in this case, lesser needs, such as safety, first must be met. 

The first step in making the prison system safer was developing a method of not only identifying violent inmates --the system already was classifying inmate security levels --but to more effectively segregate them. 

“We must treat offenders differently,” Mohr wrote in the three-tier manual. “There are offenders who are not willing to accept responsibility for their own personal growth and choose to disrupt the operations of our facilities. The end result of this disruption is an unacceptable level of violence. The 3-tier system is designed to effectively weed these offenders out of our general population prisons and place them into a secure and controlled environment.” 

As such, five prisons have been designated as control units across the state. RCI and CCI will have inmates that fall in the general population tier and will continue to house inmates of similar security levels as they did before the three-tier system. 

“If you hurt someone and you do it with intent, you’re going to go into a setting where you can’t move all over the place,” Mohr said. 

However, the idea is for inmates to improve behaviors and move up into the general population prisons and finally into one of the reintegration prisons. The system provides incentives to encourage inmates to want to improve. As they move up the tiers, activity restrictions lessen, opportunities for growth increase and they also see other benefits, such as being able to spend more money in the commissary. 

Once inmates reach the top tier, they will have at least eight hours of “meaningful activity” a day, Mohr said. The state is partnering with businesses and communities to set up work and volunteer opportunities. The Department of Corrections also is re-implementing programs with the Ohio Department of Transportation where inmates will help clean highways. 

“We want to bring the community and families in to engage through these reintegration units,” Mohr said, adding they want to see community groups offering to mentor inmates. 

The idea is to re-acclimate the inmates to what life will be like upon release, getting them used to working toward something for eight hours. Previously, the average time inmates spent doing programming was about 45 minutes per day. 

“We’re trying to treat those people who have hurt so many people in a controlled way ...but we’re also trying to push them toward reintegration where they’re working and living in prison just like we expect them to on the street,” Mohr said. 

To implement the program and increase the front line-level staff needed, cuts were made across the system and the controversial decision was made to become the first state to sell a prison to a private company. Those cuts were focused more at the state level where one in five employees were reduced, Mohr said. The idea was to cut back on the number of desk positions and increase the number of posts on the ground. 

The cuts and savings then were reallocated toward implementing the new system, including moving inmates at an average cost of $65 per transfer. Corrections spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said no additional expenses have been incurred beyond some reallocations of resources. 

To make reintegration programming effective, Mohr said they also have had to look at collateral sanctions, or punishments that are automatically imposed even if they’re not included in the sentence. In June, Gov. John Kasich signed Senate Bill 337 into law. 

The law goes into effect in late September and, in part, will lift some occupational licensing restrictions and increase the ability to seal convictions from one misdemeanor to two misdemeanors and one felony. The expectation is the changes will improve the odds of offenders finding gainful employment and starting a productive life instead of falling back into a life of crime. 

“We had been training inmates before ... but the law did not allow them to be independent contractors,” Mohr said. “The trades now can look at the body of work and allow them to be licensed. ...We now have meaningful ability to train these people in these trades.” 

On Wednesday, Mohr signed a memorandum of understanding, creating a partnership with Pennsylvania trucking company PI&I to put in place a commercial driver’s license school at two of the reintegration units. The program will graduate 120 people per year, and graduates will have a high likelihood of getting a job with PI&I upon release, Mohr said. 

“We’re trying to do things that aren’t typical but are meaningful,” Mohr said. 

Successful inmates also are being prepared to leave with Certificates of Achievement and Employability, something that was developed with sentencing reform in House Bill 86. Mohr signed the first three certificates earlier this month. 

The certificates are meant to document “exemplary behavior” of offenders who are within a year of release or release consideration. In addition to good behavior, offenders who want to earn certificates must complete vocational programs, cognitive behavioral programs, rehabilitative or achievement programs such as anger management or earning a high school diploma and perform at least 120 hours of community service. 

The certificates then can work as a reference, again with the intent to boost a person’s ability to get a job after being released. 

The reintegration units are expected to be fully in place within the next two to three months, Mohr said. 

As the system has shifted, Mohr said the department has seen a 25 percent decrease in group violence and a 7 percent decrease in individual violence. 

“The numbers are now going in the right direction,” Mohr said. 

Read this and other articles at the Chillicothe Gazette