Ohio Probation Study

A report released today by the Council of State Governments' Justice Center recommends Ohio adopt 13 changes to its probation and sentencing laws that could shrink the state's prison population by 4,500 inmates over the next four years and save taxpayers $62 million, the Associate Press reports. [ See Report ]

Those proposals are grouped in three basic categories:

• Holding offenders accountable in more meaningful ways
  
• Making smarter use of community corrections programs such as halfway houses
  
• Strengthening supervision of persons on probation

USAToday this morning also noted that “a report by the Justice Center in July of last year found that Ohio's probation system was too fragmented and the state cycles too many low-risk offenders serving short sentences through the prison system. In 2008, the state spent $189 million on inmates with an average sentence of just nine months.

“Last year's study also found that Ohio's numerous probation agencies overlap, aren't coordinated and have different training standards and that there's no useful information collected statewide that could help improve the probation system, and that the state spends more than $130 million annually on programs trying to keep people out of prison with no information on whether the programs actually work.”

The Ohio Supreme Court also reported that Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who chairs the Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission, and Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton also participated. Chief Justice O’Connor highlighting policies relating to the probation system saying, “About 75 percent of people under the control of Ohio’s criminal justice system are on probation, yet without data or coordination, the effectiveness of supervision at holding offenders accountable is largely unknown. This framework has the potential to modernize and strengthen probation and result in cost savings.”