Images that come to mind when you think of the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield likely depend largely on your age.
Younger folks likely think of the characters of Red and Andy, Warden Norton and Capt. Hadley and the imaginative prison scenes from “The Shawshank Redemption.”
Maybe you think of great music festivals at the Inkcarceration Musical & Tattoo Festival. Or maybe your mind drifts to scary moments on fall evenings walking through the haunted Blood Prison.
But while people from around the world flood into Richland County this weekend to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the classic film’s release, my thoughts will always flip back to the OSR that I first encountered in 1990.
It was a decaying, inhumane and very active state prison, overstuffed with about 2,000 convicted criminals whose crimes could not have merited the horrible lives they were forced to endure inside the gothic walls of the century-old prison.
The first time I entered the prison to cover a story as a new, 29-year-old reporter at the Mansfield News Journal, the images, the sounds and smells inside were overwhelming.
I had never experienced anything like it — and hopefully never will again.
When I entered OSR the first time, a prison staff member stamped my hand with a imprint that would be visible under ultraviolet light. He said it would be checked when I left the prison.
“What if it rubs off while I am in here?” I asked with a laugh that belied my nervousness.
He smiled and said, “You don’t get to leave.”
He was joking. I think. But I took care of that hand while I was inside the prison.
The fictional Shawshank State Prison in Maine that Andy Dufresne escaped by crawling “through 500 yards of s##* smelling foulness” could not match the real-life horrors OSR inmates and prison staff faced on a daily basis.
A researcher reported that more than 200 people died inside the walls of OSR from its opening in 1896 to its closing a century later, including two guards killed during escape attempts.
In 1990, I covered at least two homicides that occurred inside the prison.
Among the escape attempts, one featured inmates chiseling through the three-foot thick walls years before Andy Dufresne attempted it in “The Shawshank Redemption.”
Each time I entered the prison, I hoped it would be the last time. Living or working there was not something my mind could comprehend.
The east cell block remains the largest free-standing steel cell block in the world at six tiers high. The sounds coming from those cell blocks when inmates were inside included some things I had never before heard.
It was a prison that U.S. District Court Judge Frank Battisti ordered closed in 1986, the result of a prisoners’ class action lawsuit citing overcrowding and inhumane conditions.
Keep in mind conditions at OSR hadn’t suddenly gotten worse to the point the prison needed to be shuttered. It had been that way for years and years and years.
Instead, it was the fact society had changed to the point that such inhumane treatment of prisoners could no longer be tolerated — that’s what led to the closing of the Ohio State Reformatory.
Despite the federal court ruling, OSR remained open for four more years due to delays in new state prison construction, including the nearby Mansfield Correctional Institution that opened in 1990.
“Dracula’s Castle” finally closed its doors at the end of that same year.
I am glad the core of the architectural genius of Cleveland’s Levi T. Scofield was saved from the wrecking ball by local residents who realized the historic value of OSR. I am happy what’s left of the prison is being restored for future generations to visit and learn about.
I am thrilled the former prison is a driver of local economic tourism dollars, including all of the wonderful events taking place this weekend.
I look forward to covering as many as I can for Richland Source. People should enjoy a celebratory weekend and remember the great film, “The Shawshank Redemption.”
But we will all be remiss if we didn’t stop for at least a moment this weekend and think about all of the inmates who were incarcerated at OSR and the conditions they endured — and the corrections officers and prison staff who worked there every day.
For many of those folks, hope was the only good thing they ever had.
