By Jeremey Pelzer
Northeast Ohio Media Group
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Gov. John Kasich’s mid-biennium budget review includes $53.5 million to hire dozens of staffers at the state’s crowded prisons and expand community rehab programs for inmates.
About $41 million of the money sought during the next two fiscal years in the mid-biennium legislation, introduced earlier this week, would be used to hire 87 employees at prisons in Chillicothe, Mansfield, and Toledo, according to Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokeswoman JoEllen Smith.
Most of the new hires would be corrections officers, Smith said.
The proposed funding comes as Ohio’s inmate population is nearing a record high, leading state prison officials to reopen shuttered cell wings and look to community-based alternatives to incarceration.
Full story: Governor calls for $53.5 million in new prison spending as inmate population grows