At first look, the cell block looks just like a prison: a large metal door guards each cell, concrete lines the floor and a guard is posted, sturdily, at the block’s entrance. But for the felons serving months, years or decades in prison for their crimes, this is the jailhouse’s version of the good life.
A year ago these perks — a TV in the common area, a single occupant cell, access to a computer for video chat, for a small fee, and the ability to foster and train a shelter dog — didn’t exist.
The changes follow the state’s broader push across Ohio to reward inmates for good behavior and isolate those who continuously act out. Warden Ernie Moore said he hopes the small incentives encourage prisoners to cooperate and create a better place to live and work.
“Managing prisons is about encouraging inmates to behave themselves,” Moore said of his operation.
‘Positive path’
The prison in Lebanon, which costs Ohio’s taxpayers roughly $42 million to operate annually and is home to more than 2,600 inmates, has had rocky moments in recent years.
Former Warden Timothy Brunsman was demoted in mid-2012 following a string of reports that several staff members at the prison were engaging in inappropriate sex acts with inmates. Brunsman, who had overseen the prison since 2007, is now working at the Madison Correctional Institution.
The year before, the state’s bi-partisan Correctional Institution Inspection Committee detailed a number of concerns about the prison in a 2011 report. The committee cited disciplinary strategies, a lack of incentives offered to inmates, and the staff’s tendency to refer to the prison as a “disciplinary camp” as problematic. The prison also reported a significantly higher number of incidents where an officer used force against an inmate compared to any other prison in the state. And, just months prior to the troubled report, roughly 1,000 prisoners had staged a protest and forced a lockdown at the facility.
Earlier this month, this newspaper reported that staffers working at Lebanon, which houses more inmates in the segregation unit than any other Ohio prison, had suffered the second-most physical assaults from inmates in the state from 2010 to 2012.
But state prison officials say they’ve made significant strides at Lebanon since Moore took control in Aug. 2012. Moore was the warden at the prison from 2004 to 2007 and also held the position of prisons director in 2010.
“It’s the respect that our staff has for our warden and his ability to lead us as a team,” Lebanon prison spokeswoman Ellen Myers said of changes at the facility. “What Warden Moore has brought back is the concept that we are a team.”
Overall prison violence is down by 8 percent since 2011 at the prison, for example, and the number of times a staffer used force against an inmate has also dropped by 5 percent in that same time, Moore said.
And, the state’s most recent inspection report echoed similar praise of the warden and his staff. The committee, for the time in years, described the prison as a “prison in transition” but, “on a positive path for the future” in a report released in May.
Moore, who was selected by prison staffers as the employee of the month this January, has boosted morale among staff working at the prison, said Joanna Saul, the executive director for the state’s prison watchdog group that inspects the facilities.
“It’s completely because of Warden Moore, the staff will even tell you and told me; all they have is just praise for him and the current operation staff,” Saul said.
The prison has physically changed, too. Reports about cockroach-infested cells have slowed and the state committee even noted fewer complaints from prison inmates and their families about maintenance issue since 2011, the report noted.
“I don’t want to work in a dirty prison. I don’t want our staff to work in a dirty prison and I don’t want an inmate to live in a dirty prison,” Moore said. “We have too many people working and living here for this place to be dirty. We really put pressure on folks to keep the building clean.”
‘Circle of hope’
As part of the statewide changes, Moore introduced a system called the ‘circle of hope’ at Lebanon.
Moore hopes the system inspires inmates, even those isolated in the prison’s segregation unit, to avoid prison spats or backtalk and, instead, behave well to work up through the system.
“When you’ve got 2,650 people that you’ve taken away from their families and you put them in a big fenced in area and the courts, the sentence is punishing them, if that group of folks loses hope you start having problems,” Moore said.
The goal, in the prison’s ‘circle of hope’ is for prisoners to work their way up to the prison’s single-cell merit block, where prisoners get bonuses including a private cell, access to better-paying jobs and a microwave oven in their room. Once they’ve made it to the single-cell merit block the prisoners are typically either ready for release or to be transferred to a different lower security prison. Another lower level privilege unit is called the merit housing unit, where inmates are still bunked together but can pay for amenities such as a TV. Prisoners housed in other areas of the prison, including the segregation unit, get less privileges.
Corrections Officer Pete Cole, who has worked in the prison for 11 years, said the new system encourages some motivated prisoners to work toward a goal and try to better their situation while serving time.
“Some take advantage of it…they want to work to get to the super merit block,” Cole said of the incentive program. “It’s more on them (because) we have all of the stuff in place for them.”
Despite promising changes, the problems of under staffing and inmate overcrowding — Lebanon is typically about 30 percent over capacity with inmates — have gone unsolved at Lebanon, and at prisons across Ohio, James Adkins, a board member on the Ohio Civil Service Employee Association, the union representing corrections officers, said.
“What we need is more boots on the ground,” Adkins said.
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