The president of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, the union that represents most of Ohio’s prison guards, says sentencing reforms passed into law recently were supposed to reduce the prison population.  But Chris Mabe says things are worse now.

Mabe – We’re down two percent as far as inmate population but we are down five percent as far as corrections officers.  A year ago, we were at a 1 to 7.7 inmates and a year after sentencing reforms, we are at 1 to 8 inmates.

Mabe says the situation at the Toledo Correctional Institution is particularly bad because staff runs 25% short on most nights, causing employees to work overtime.  He says the problem is people are retiring or leaving their jobs and are not being replaced.  The Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in a news release, states the population at the Toledo facility is down 300 inmates from 2011. And the news release notes the corrections department is in the process of hiring 18 additional corrections officers.