MANSFIELD – A major financial cut to an important program in Richland County’s justice system was avoided on Thursday after vocal opposition from state and local officials.
Thanks in part to action from the Richland County Commissioners, State Rep. Mark Romanchuk and State Sen. Larry Obhof, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ORDC) reversed their decision to cut pre-sentence investigation (PSI) funding from 11 counties in Ohio, including Richland County. The cut would have eliminated $600,000 from all 11 counties total, and $171,756 from Richland County.
Commissioner Tony Vero believed the proposed funding cut may have been a vindictive move in response to Richland County’s opposition to Gov. John Kasich’s Targeted Community Alternatives to Prison (T-CAP) program, of which the county opted out of.
“It appeared, and was later confirmed from the County Commissioners Association of Ohio, that these 11 counties shared one common trait: they were 11 counties who elected not to participate in the governor’s T-CAP plan,” Vero said.
The T-CAP program was introduced last year within House Bill 49, the state’s proposed 2018-2019 fiscal year budget, and prohibits a person sentenced for a non-sexual, non-violent fifth-degree felony from serving time in a state prison institution. According to Vero, Ohio’s 10 most populated counties were required to participate in T-CAP, but participation was voluntary for the other 78 counties. Of the 22 counties who opted out of T-CAP, 11 are receiving PSI funding, including Richland County.
Richland County law enforcement officials unanimously opposed the provision in March 2017, including Common Pleas Judge Brent Robinson, Mansfield Police Chief Ken Coontz, Prosecutor Gary Bishop, and Sheriff Steve Sheldon, stating the bill would put the financial burden of incarceration for fifth-degree felony prisoners on the local level.
In March 2017, Vero stated it costs roughly $66 to $72 per day to house someone in the county jail, and $50 per day for a drug offender housed in the community alternative center. Under the T-CAP program, the state would reimburse Richland County for approximately $23 per day, based on a formula looking at inmate population and county population.
Based on these estimates, the state would reimburse Richland County approximately $552,000 for housing these fifth-degree felony prisoners. That equals an additional cost of $1,033,584 to the county to house these prisoners.
“We felt there were major problems with that to begin with,” said Common Pleas Judge Brent Robinson on Thursday. “You can’t reimburse somebody $23 and expect them to keep people in jail when it costs around $70 to put somebody in jail. The math doesn’t work.”
According to Commissioner Marilyn John, the response has not been positive from the 56 counties that are participating in the T-CAP program.
“They are finding what we had found, which was they’re not going to get reimbursed the cost of what it was going to be, so they were not happy with out the program was coming out, which was why we chose not to participate,” John said. “We had looked ahead and found it was going to cost us a lot of money to do this, and have a negative impact on the specialty dockets we have currently in Common Pleas Court.”
With the goal of the T-CAP program being to reduce Ohio’s prison populations by keeping offenders at the local level, Robinson pointed out the specialty dockets within Common Pleas – like drug court or veterans court – already accomplish that goal. Not only that, but the elimination of PSI funding would actually mean sending more people to prison.
Robinson explained that pre-sentence investigations are conducted to understand an offender’s background, including prior convictions, family history, medical history including any addictions, and mental health, and help the court decide an appropriate sentence for that individual. A PSI is also needed to direct an individual to a specialty court.
“If I don’t have a pre-sentence investigation I don’t have the authority to give them probation,” Robinson said. “It would be counterproductive to what the ODRC is trying to do, which is lower prison populations. It would actually increase them.”
Prosecutor Gary Bishop also vouched for the importance of a pre-sentence investigation within Richland County’s justice system.
“Without the funding and without the ability to generate pre-sentence investigations, it would force the prosecutor to operate blind. And that’s just untenable,” Bishop said. “We need to know on a case-by-case basis that individual’s background; without that information, we’re just shooting in the dark.”
While the commissioners celebrated a win on Thursday by avoiding a PSI funding cut, John warned that potential budget cuts could still be on the horizon. Currently the ODRC is 1,700 people over what their projected prison population would be at this time in the year, a problem they hoped to solve with T-CAP except for the fact the program has not been as successful as anticipated.
“Part of the reason for the (PSI) reduction was they’ve got to come up with this extra money somewhere,” John said. “We need to be aware of the impact this could have on us long-term. It’s a bigger story, and they are having to deal with the realities of there are more people going to jail, and the cost that is having on the state budget.”
