By Tom Beyerlein
The Dayton Daily News
OHIO — The director of Ohio’s prison system has asked his staff for more information after being surprised by the number of staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct allegations that showed up on a federal survey released last week.
Director Terry Collins of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said Monday “it jumped out at me” when the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported there were 89 accusations of staff misconduct in Ohio prisons in 2006. Only four of these cases were substantiated, with 78 deemed unsubstantiated and six unfounded. Another case was still under investigation.
The Ohio system also had 67 reported cases of inmateon-inmate “nonconsensual sexual acts” - 16 of which were substantiated. There were almost 45,000 inmates in Ohio in mid-2006. Today, that number is roughly 49,000.
The survey covers U.S. institutions housing 1.8 million prisoners, or 81 percent of all inmates in adult facilities in 2006.
The information in the survey came from the state prison systems. The bureau said “caution is necessary for accurate interpretation of the survey results” because the states don’t all use the same definitions in reporting sex crimes.
Experts on prison rape said the number of reported allegations is less significant than the numbers of cases that the states determine are “unsubstantiated” or “unfounded.” Under the bureau’s definition, unfounded means officials determined that the alleged incident never occurred. Unsubstantiated means no evidence was presented to verify if the alleged incident occurred.
The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, created by a 2003 act of Congress, expressed concern about the high percentage of unsubstantiated and unfounded cases in many states, saying it may indicate prison officials aren’t taking accusations seriously.
“I think that is the big story of this report,” said Commissioner Brenda Smith of Washington, D.C. Those numbers show there is “still some serious problems with investigating these cases and really getting to the bottom of what’s going on.”
Smith said more cameras and better investigative techniques would help.
The commission is working on national standards for dealing with prison sex abuse. Smith said a draft should be ready by mid-2008.
Smith praised Ohio for its efforts in recent years to improve the reporting of sex offenses.
Collins said the state has established training for staff and inmates on reporting abuse and a special hotline for purported victims. A staff person is assigned as a “victim coordinator” to accusers - “we treat them as if they were a victim, just like victims on the street.”
He said the department calls in the Ohio Highway Patrol to help investigate possible criminal offenses, so there’s an outside set of eyes on the investigations. Victims and predators are separated.
Collins didn’t have a breakdown for staff misconduct cases. But he said Chillicothe Correctional Institution had the most allegations of sexual assaults by inmates in 2006, with 15, followed by Madison Correctional, with 11. Lebanon Correctional had four allegations and Warren Correctional near Lebanon had three. Dayton Correctional, which singlecells its inmates and by state law can’t be overcrowded, had no allegations.
It’s difficult to substantiate allegations of wrongdoing by inmates or staff because there often are no witnesses and sometimes accusers recant, Collins said.
But Smith said her commission’s standards will help the states deal more effectively with the long-standing problem of sex abuse in prison.
“Arrest, incarceration, being jailed — that is the punishment,” she said. “Being victimized shouldn’t be part of the prison experience. Us not doing anything about it reflects poorly on us as a nation. And we can do something about it.”
Copyright 2007 The Dayton Daily News