From toilet paper and license plates to processed meat and furniture, products made by Ohio inmates are becoming increasingly profitable as the state’s prisons act more like private businesses. In fiscal 2013, Ohio Penal Industries made $7.8 million from inmate labor inside the penitentiary.
Assaults in Ohio prisons up 20.6%
The new state prisons director is tamping down on escalating violence in Ohio’s 31 prisons, where inmate-on-inmate assaults have jumped 20.6 percent last year over 2007 and disturbances involving four or more prisoners increased 102 percent during the same period.
‘an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” Martin Luther King Jr. Together we negotiate; Divided we beg
Gov. John Kasich’s proposed budget for fiscal 2012-13 includes a nearly 10 percent cut in overall funding for the $1.76 billion prison system, and involves privatizing five prisons, increasing the use of parole and reducing the number of inmates returning to prison on“technical” parole violations.