CCNO Meets

Increas­ing prison trans­ports high­lighted Wednesday’s meet­ing of the Cor­rec­tions Com­mis­sion of North­west Ohio. Also, board mem­bers took time to tour newly painted units within the 638-bed facil­ity.

CCNO Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Jim Den­nis told the board that Lucas County offi­cials had expressed con­cern about the num­ber of prison runs CCNO is pro­vid­ing. In 2009 the prison runs were reduced from two to only one per week to reduce costs, he said, amount­ing to a pro­jected sav­ings of about $65,453 per year.

It was done because in addi­tion to CCNO trans­port­ing offend­ers to state pris­ons, they are also bring­ing back offend­ers from prison for court hear­ings.

Also, a judge in Williams County is using video con­fer­enc­ing to avoid hav­ing offend­ers being brought back for judi­cial review and requir­ing the fam­ily to trans­port if the offender is released from prison. Mr. Den­nis said there are 33 pris­ons in Ohio and the major­ity are located in the south­ern por­tion, requir­ing a 12 to 16-hour road trip.

A six-year study revealed that CCNO trans­ported an aver­age of 1,323 offend­ers per year to and from prison.