WASHINGTON, D.C., November 20, 2003—The flow of prisoners leaving Ohio prisons tripled in 20 years, jumping from 8,522 in 1982 to 25,624 last year, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center. Sentencing-reform legislation implemented in mid-1996 contributed to a 44 percent increase in releases since 1997.
Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Summit, Montgomery, Lorain, and Lucas counties received 62 percent of the prisoners released in 2001. Twenty-two percent returned to Cuyahoga County, with 18 percent heading for Cleveland. Five economically and socially disadvantaged Cleveland neighborhoods—Hough, Central, Glenville, Mount Pleasant, and Union-Miles—accounted for 28 percent of the prisoners returning to that city.
"The return of released prisoners to these high-concentration communities is only half the story," researcher Nancy La Vigne points out. "The other half is the high rates of people being sent or returned to prison who come from these communities; such high concentrations of residents cycling in and out of prison may destabilize social networks and social relationships within neighborhoods."
Columbus and Cincinnati each received about 10 percent of 2001's exiting prisoners, followed by Akron, at 5 percent, and 4 percent each for Dayton and Toledo.
The report, "A Portrait of Prisoner Reentry in Ohio," examines the policy context surrounding reentry, characteristics of those exiting state prisons in 2001, efforts to prepare them for release, the geographic distribution of prisoners returning home, and the social and economic climates of the most-affected communities. Data came from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change at Case Western Reserve University.
Reentry in Ohio
Between 1982 and 2002, Ohio's prison population increased 164 percent—from 17,147 to 45,284—echoing the national trend. (Ohio's prison population peaked in mid-1998 at just over 49,000 prisoners.) The overall rise was fueled by increased admissions for drug offenses and violent crimes and by longer lengths of stay.
Of the prisoners released in 2001:
- 89 percent were male, 53 percent were black, and 45 percent were white. Their average age was 33.
- 26 percent were confined for drug offenses as their most serious conviction, 23 percent for violent offenses, and 12 percent for technical violations committed while subject to post-release supervision. Property and a variety of other offenses accounted for the remainder. The average time served was two years.
- 44 percent had been incarcerated in an Ohio prison at least once before. Of those released in 2001, 17 percent returned to prison within one year.
- 62 percent were released to community supervision, such as parole, up from 33 percent in 1996.
Getting Ready for Reentry
Over the past two and a half years, the report notes, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has been developing a more systematic approach to prisoner reentry. These efforts have focused on addressing reentry issues from the beginning of a prisoner's incarceration, enhancing their release preparation, and forging stronger links to community-based, post-release services.
Nearly one-quarter of prisoners were enrolled in an educational program on any given day in fiscal 2002, ranging from literacy to college-level coursework. (The average educational achievement for persons admitted to Ohio prisons in fiscal 2002 was a grade level of 7.7.) Almost 14,000 prisoners took part in substance abuse programming. In February 2003, just over 8,000 individuals, or approximately 18 percent of the prison population, were on the Bureau of Mental Health Services caseload.
The National Picture
More prisoners nationwide are returning home (630,000 federal and state prisoners in 2001) having spent longer terms behind bars, exacerbating the already significant challenges of finding employment, obtaining housing, and reconnecting with family. Prisoners today are typically less prepared for reintegration, less connected to community-based social structures, and more likely to have health or substance abuse problems than in the past.
"These challenges affect more than returning prisoners and their families; they also have serious public safety implications for the communities to which prisoners return," says researcher Gillian Thomson. "Ex-prisoners returning to communities with high unemployment rates, limited affordable housing options, high crime rates, and few services are more likely to relapse and return to a life of crime."
The "Returning Home" Initiative
"A Portrait of Prisoner Reentry in Ohio," funded by the George Gund Foundation, the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, is a product of the Urban Institute's "Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry" initiative. Upcoming Ohio research will address individual, family, and community circumstances affecting reentry. It will use pre- and post-release interviews with prisoners returning to Cleveland and interviews with prisoners' family members and community leaders. These interviews, combined with analyses of official records, will help to identify the unmet needs of returning prisoners, such as housing, employment, and health care.
Additional Ohio reports will be published in 2004. Similar research is being conducted in Illinois and Texas. Maryland served as the project's pilot study site.
A second Urban Institute project in Ohio is exploring the ways prisoners returning to Hamilton County (Cincinnati) with mental and physical health problems are connecting to community health care providers. The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati is funding this research.
"A Portrait of Prisoner Reentry in Ohio," by Nancy G. La Vigne and Gillian L. Thomson with Christy Visher, Vera Kachnowski, and Jeremy Travis, is available at http://urban.org/url.cfm?ID=410891. Maryland and Illinois portraits can be found, respectively, at http://urban.org/url.cfm?ID=410655 and http://urban.org/url.cfm?ID=410662.
These studies are part of the Urban Institute's ongoing research on crime and justice issues. For more on this subject, go to http://urban.org/r/crime.cfm.
The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation.
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