By Alan Johnson
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio is hiring a leading national expert on inmate suicides in the wake of two high-profile suicide cases.
Dr. Lindsay M. Hayes, project director of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives in Mansfield, Mass., will be paid $13,125 to examine inmate mental-health assessments and other protocols and procedures, said Gary Mohr, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Hayes’ rate is $168.75 per hour, plus travel expenses.
Mohr said Hayes will team with Fred Cohen, a law professor who is now a health-care consultant to state prisons and previously served as the federal court-appointed monitor in the settlement of a lawsuit challenging inmate medical care.
Mohr said he decided to bring in Hayes and Cohen in light of concerns because of two recent suicides — Death Row prisoner Billy Slagle on Aug. 4 and Ariel Castro on Sept. 3. Slagle was just three days away from his execution date, while Castro had served a single month of his life sentence for kidnapping three Cleveland women and holding them hostage in his home for nearly a decade.
Full story: Inmate-suicide expert will examine Ohio prisons system