Opinions vary on diversion program
A devastating statewide heroin crisis is the wrong time to let some convicted heroin dealers avoid jail, Auditor Dave Yost charges about a proposal to reduce the state prison population.
Yost, former Delaware County prosecutor and a Republican candidate for
attorney general next year, criticized what he calls a “prison-free” proposal for fifth-degree felons, including certain low-level drug-trafficking offenders, included in Gov. John Kasich’s two-year budget.
“A person convicted of a felony needs to face the possibility of a prison sentence — if not as an initial sentence, at least as a possible sanction for violation of initial terms of probation,” Yost wrote in an opinion column for The Dispatch. “The proposed budget takes that tool out of the hands of judges for these criminals. Worse, it softens punishment while pretending that nothing has changed.”
But Judge John W. “Tim” Rudduck of Clinton County Common Pleas Court, calls Yost’s criticism a “red herring.” Rudduck, as part of a pilot program, said he hasn’t sentenced a single person to prison on a fifth-degree felony since last October.
“I think our community is safer,” he said.
The debate focuses on the Targeted Community Alternatives to Prison, or TCAP. State prisons Director Gary Mohr’s plan aims to divert more than 4,000 nonviolent, fifthdegree felons from state prisons into county jails and community-treatment programs. Sex offenders would not be eligible. The state would pay counties to handle diverted inmates, about one-third of what it costs the state.
Mohr has testified to lawmakers that TCAP would help relieve prison crowding and save taxpayers up to $20 million by reducing incarceration costs.
Yost argues it would allow people convicted of “aggravated trafficking in heroin” along with a wide swath of other felony offenders, avoid prison and remove judges’ sentencing authority. Yost said he supports diverting people from prison who commit low-level offenses, but this is not the way to do it, nor
the time, when more than 4,100 Ohioans died from overdoses last year.
Two Republican judges interviewed by The Dispatch differ on the proposal.
Rudduck said the pilot program is “working really well” in Clinton County. The county received a $199,000 state grant to pay for diversion programs in lieu of sending offenders to more costly prisons.
The judge pointed out that there is no specific charge of “aggravated trafficking in heroin,” as Yost said. Instead, a fifth-degree felony, by law, involves a very small amount of drugs, oftentimes a single dose of heroin. Larger amounts trigger a fourth-degree felony charge, which would be ineligible for diversion.
“Most of these people are drug-addicted souls who can’t get off the drugs and are selling the stuff to provide for themselves,” Rudduck said. “I can punish these folks locally without sending them to prison.”
Judge Eamon Costello of Madison County Common
Pleas Court said Mohr’s proposal would block his judicial authority to consider specific circumstances in a case and the offender’s background during sentencing.
“It removes the human element and sometimes may end up with unintended consequences,” Costello said. “I’d be stuck wrestling with what am I going to do with these people? These cases happen in every court in every county.”
Mohr said in a statement that the proposal “effectively treats and supervises nonviolent, oftentimes drug-addicted Ohioans in a way that creates the greatest opportunity for them to change their lives. As Ohio battles the opiate epidemic, TCAP is a proven reform that places resources in the hands of communities, ultimately providing better outcomes for individuals while saving money and creating a safer Ohio.”