By Alan Johnson
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville continues to be the state’s most violent prison, troubled by gang activity, high drug-use rates and inmate complaints about use of force by corrections officers, a new report says.
The Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, a legislative watchdog agency for prisons, said in a report released Tuesday that the institution has made some progress. Violence has declined somewhat, there were no backlogs for health and mental-health care, the prison is well-managed and its finances are rated as “excellent” by CIIC.
However, the prison — Ohio’s primary maximum-security institution — is consistently the most violent in the state in inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff assaults. It is at the center of a restructuring plan in which the most difficult and violent inmates are moved there.
There were 409 violent incidents there last year, 152 assaults on staff members and 257 on other inmates. That compares with 395 total assaults in 2014 and 440 in 2013.
Education programs at the prison are “significantly below” those at other facilities, and access to the prison library was restricted because of security concerns, the agency reported.
The Scioto County prison has an annual budget of $51.4 million; houses 1,228 inmates, nearly all of them maximum security; and has a staff of 638, including 446 corrections officers. All executions are conducted at the prison, though none has been carried out since 2014.
The most recent random drug tests, in January, found that 5.17 percent of inmates were positive for drugs. The high rate reflects a problem with contraband coming into the prison, the report said.
JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said the agency has “zero tolerance for contraband. When information is received suggesting the potential conveyance of any type of contraband, that allegation is taken very seriously and is thoroughly investigated both internally and by the Ohio State Highway Patrol if criminal behavior is suspected.”
In other findings, the prison has a large number of inmates connected with gangs, a factor contributing to the high rate of violence, and inmates frequently complain about inappropriate use of force and “abusive language with racial overtones” by prison guards.
Copyright 2016 The Columbus Dispatch