Work Release May Be A Thing Of The Past Soon

Offi­cials at the Cor­rec­tions Cen­ter of North­west Ohio are giv­ing seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to clos­ing the work release pro­gram at the regional jail.

At the board meet­ing this week, CCNO Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Jim Den­nis said jail offi­cials have been study­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion in the work release pro­gram at CCNO for the past year as par­tic­i­pa­tion con­tin­ues to drop, costs con­tinue to increase and tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments con­tinue to improve for GPS super­vi­sion. The two-story build­ing con­structed in 1990 was orig­i­nally des­ig­nated for work release but now houses min­i­mum secu­rity offend­ers with only a few work release par­tic­i­pants.

Den­nis said in the past there were 75 to 80 work release par­tic­i­pants per day com­pared to seven today. Research pro­vided to board mem­bers showed that the aver­age work release par­tic­i­pant spends more than half their time at work or on the road while the bed remains reserved for the entire day.

Jail offi­cials are rec­om­mend­ing area judges use more tech­no­log­i­cal advances — such as GPS — which has the capa­bil­ity to track the par­tic­i­pant at all times. Cur­rently, there is no track­ing mech­a­nism under the work release pro­gram.

The pro­posed clos­ing of the work release pro­gram will be fur­ther stud­ied, and a deci­sion on the mat­ter is expecte at the June meeting.