By Danielle Keeton-Olsen
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Leah Marquis, a corrections officer at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, said she felt the weight of staff reductions in her workload.
Last week, Marquis was “retained” for four days, meaning she was required to work a second eight-hour shift for four days in a row. Retention is becoming more common at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, she said.
“It’s creating a problem with morale, for one, and people are just getting burnt out,” Marquis said. “People are getting that (order) two to three days per week, and it’s a lot for them.”
Marquis and a few dozen other members of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association carried signs and crowded the entrance to the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction building on W. Broad Street yesterday to protest cuts in corrections-officer staffing.
Reductions in the correctional staff throughout the state have led to increased violence, escape attempts and suicides in Ohio prisons, union president Christopher Mabe said.
“This is about providing safety and security in our prisons,” he said.
The prisons agency has lost 400 corrections officer positions within the past two years, primarily because hiring boards would not replace all officers who retire, Mabe said.
“When (the prisons afency’s) primary focus is security, it’s done well,” Mabe said. “The more ancillary things that you have to do, the more contracting out that you have to deal with, the more people we have coming into prisons, it’s still lessening the ability to perform our mission.”
The prisons department is involved with the union in collective-bargaining arbitration proceedings over the outsourcing of food-service operations, and the two organizations share the ultimate goal of keeping facilities safe and secure, JoEllen Smith, agency spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Prisonss Director Gary Mohr has met with union leaders in regional labor-management meetings to discuss issues of concern, Smith said.
“We believe the union has mischaracterized the willingness of DRC to work to resolve issues over privatization,” Smith said.
When the Toledo Correctional Institution experienced overcrowding, the state stepped in to redistribute some of the prisoners, said Angela Brandel, a corrections officer from the institution.
Brandel was glad the agency helped reduce the institution’s population to a manageable level, but she said the redistribution increased other prison staffs’ workloads.
“They gave all of our problems to someone else,” Brandel said.