Eighteen months after the first state-owned prison sold to a for-profit prison company, and there is no doubt that the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is woefully unfit for the job. From dirty conditions, rampant drug use, and staggering increases in violence, the Lake Erie Correctional Institution is in a dangerous decline, leaving many to questions whether the state needs to step in and assume greater control. To illustrate the deterioration of the for-profit prison, the ACLU of Ohio released a timeline showing the disturbing series of events at Lake Erie.
Yesterday, retiring Ohio GOP Congressman Steve LaTourette made national headlines while discussing the recent presidential election. He said:
My wife’s a Democrat, and she was so close to voting for Mitt Romney. But then, you know, Mourdock and Akin opened their mouth, and we sent [voters] running back to the Democratic Party, because they think we’re nutty […] We have to get out of people’s lives, get out of people’s bedrooms, and we have to be a national party…or else we’re going to lose.
Ohio elections are once again making national news, but not exactly in the way we’d hoped. County Boards of Elections are deciding whether they will be open extended hours on evenings and weekends for early in-person voting. In 2008, many counties, including Cuyahoga and Franklin (home to Cleveland and Columbus) had large numbers of voters use these extended hours.
In the second time in as many months, Governor John Kasich has intervened to stop an execution. Today, he commuted John Jeffrey Eley’s sentence to life without the possibility of parole. Eley was scheduled to be executed on July 26.
On Monday, May 7, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights will hold a field hearing in Cleveland, Ohio to examine the impact of Ohio’s new voting law, HB 194.
It's Super Tuesday and as voters go to the polls in Ohio today, we're reminded that in recent months, the nation has seen a tidal wave of legislation seemingly coordinated to keep some voters away from the ballot box. Ohio, as one of the perennial "swing states," is not immune. In June 2011, state legislators passed House Bill 194, which would severely limit voters' access to the ballot box by limiting early voting, prohibiting poll workers from assisting voters completing election forms and ballots and making it more difficult for local boards of elections to promote early voting to all registered voters.
As Mark Twain famously wrote, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." A recent letter sent out by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to 48 governors offering to buy state prisons included a little of each.
Much of CCA's letter was devoted to touting its recent purchase of Lake Erie Correctional Institution in Conneaut, Ohio. In 2012, the Lake Erie facility became the first publicly owned prison in the nation sold to a private prison company. While this is certainly a dubious distinction, CCA took some liberties with the facts.
