By Randy Ludlow
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — State officials are exploring the possible merger of Ohio’s adult and juvenile prison systems as part of the budget to be introduced early next year.
The administration of Republican Gov. John Kasich is discussing combining the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and the Department of Youth Services, multiple sources told The Dispatch.
The governor’s office would not directly comment on the reports.
“Since the beginning of the administration, Ohio has worked to improve public services by reducing bureaucratic waste and ensuring that state agencies more effectively serve their customers. That is a mission and goal we will continue to pursue,” spokeswoman Emmalee Kalmbach said in a statement.
In moves billed as increasing efficiency and lowering costs, the Kasich administration merged the Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services and the Department of Mental Health in 2013 and, more recently, combined the parks and watercraft divisions within the Department of Natural Resources.
With the increased use of community-based and alternative programs and facilities, the Department of Youth Services is a fraction of its former size. It now directly operates three detention centers and also uses other facilities to house an offender population of 478. In 2008, the state operated eight facilities containing about 1,500 youths ages 10 to 21.
The agency has 997 employees and an annual budget of $212.7 million, with a daily average cost, including staff payroll, of $541.79 per incarcerated offender — nearly $198,000 a year each.
The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, meanwhile, is handling a near-record number of prisoners, with 50,795 in custody, about 500 below the all-time high set in 2008. It has 12,166 employees and a $1.66 billion annual budget. Its comparable average daily cost translates to $67.84 per inmate, or nearly $25,000 a year.
“Given the similarities in some of what we do, we regularly talk with the Department of Youth Services on best practices and partnerships that will help us become more efficient and drive more resources to our core missions,” said prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith.
Officials of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, which represents the unionized state workers in both adult and juvenile prisons, are aware of the potential merger.
“I’ve heard that frequently,” said Karl Wilkins, the lead union official at Youth Services, where he works at the Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility. “But, we’ve inquired and we were told there was no validity to that other than some shared services.”
Wilkins said the adult and juvenile prison systems should remain separate given their “totally different missions.”
“Not that they (the adult prisons) don’t work on rehabilitation, but that’s our core mission. We’ve tried to become a kinder, gentler agency,” Wilkins said.
The Department of Youth Services recently was released from a federal court decree in which it agreed to make dramatic changes in how young offenders are handled.
Sen. Cliff Hite, R-Findlay, chairman of the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee that keeps watch on adult prisons, had not heard talk of a merger.
“I’d really have to examine that one, and vet it,” he said.
North Carolina and Kansas are among the states that have consolidated their adult and juvenile prison systems in recent years.