By Alan Johnson
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Two decades after Ohio officials got tough on crime, triggering an influx of new felons and unprecedented wave of prison construction, the state appears ready to change direction.
An unusual coalition rolled out a major criminal justice reform proposal at the Statehouse today.
The group included Republican legislative leaders of both the Ohio House and Senate, the U.S. Justice Action Network, tax reformer Grover Norquist, the American Civil Liberties Union, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Judith Lanzinger, and Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison.
“No one is here to say today that criminals should not be punished. We are here to say that not all crimes or criminals are created equal,” said Senate President Keith Faber, R-Celina. “This is not about being hard or soft on crime. It’s about being smart on crime.”
Faber noted that Ohio’s prisons are overcrowded at 139 percent of capacity.
The reforms to be steered through the Ohio Criminal Justice Recodification Committee were described as “commonsense solutions to safely reduce the prison population and associated costs, remove unfair or duplicative laws from the books, and break down barriers to employment for ex-offenders.” The committee is comprised of judges, prosecutors, lawmakers, public defenders and others was appointed by Senate President Keith Faber, R-Celina.
Ohio lawmakers passed many tough-on-crime laws in the 1990s, many of them focusing on non-violent drug crimes. New prisons were built to accommodate the influx of new offenders. As of last month, Ohio’s public and privately operated prison held 50,433 inmates, about 30 percent above the designed capacity.
Ohio prison director Reginald A. Wilkinson, responded in 1997 to legislative plans to lock up more drug users and keep other offenders longer.
“You can’t get one without the other. When laws are passed, there is a consequence,” Wilkinson said. “That sometimes means lots and lots of dollars.”
It is not known if Gov. John Kasich’s administration — which operates the prison system — will support the reform plan.