Privatizing Ohio Prisons

Ohio Governor Kasich plans to privatize five of Ohio’s prisons by selling the land and facilities to private corrections operators. Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Director Gary Mohr talks about about prison system changes including privatization and sentencing reform.

Related items:

• Director says Ohio prison sale helps avoid cuts - AP If Ohio officials do not pursue the sale of five state prisons, multiple prisons would likely have to close, inmates would be shipped out of state and thousands of employees would be laid off, the state's prison director said Monday. Gary Mohr told an Ohio House committee that his Department of Rehabilitation and Correction faces "historic budget challenges" in the coming two-year budget, partly because it no longer can count on the $300 million in federal stimulus money it got in the last budget.
• Prisons are filled with stress and violence; without proper supervision they can revert to primitive places. That's what happened at Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Mississippi, an NPR news investigation has determined.  NPR, March 25, 2011 (First in a two-part series)
• The country with the highest incarceration rate in the world — the United States — is supporting a $3 billion private prison industry. In Texas, where free enterprise meets law and order, there are more for-profit prisons than any other state. But because of a growing inmate shortage, some private jails cannot fill empty cells, leaving some towns wishing they'd never gotten in the prison business.  NPR, March 28, 2011 (Part two of a two-part series)