More not better: Mohr helped reduce prison population

Ohio’s overcrowded prisons remain a major problem and challenge, but the man who just ended his seven-year tenure as director of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction deserves a lot of credit for getting the system moving in the right direction.

With any luck, perhaps in another seven years, the numbers will be more to Gary Mohr’s liking. If they are, the changes he championed likely will be part of the reason.

Mohr, who retired Friday after a 44-year career with the department, pronounced himself “disheartened” with the fact that Ohio’s prisons today hold 49,500 inmates — about six times as many as the 8,300 who were locked up when he began as a teacher’s aide at Marion Correctional Institution in 1974.

The increase owes not to population growth or a crime boom over that period; those numbers have been relatively level. It stems largely from lawmakers’ badly misguided move over the decades toward harsher fixed sentences, leaving far too many people locked up for low-level nonviolent offenses, especially drug possession.

When Gov. John Kasich named Mohr as prisons chief in 2011, Mohr was determined not to just watch the prison population, then topping 50,000, keep growing. Instead, he focused on mental-health treatment for inmates to help them get their lives on track and avoid ever returning. He pushed energetically for alternatives like community-based supervision and drug treatment that have proved to be twice as effective as prison at turning lives around.

The results are impressive: In 2000, 39 percent of people released from Ohio prisons reoffended within three years, but under Mohr’s watch, the recidivism rate dropped below 30 percent, well below the national rate of 68 percent. Thanks to that and to sentencing alternatives favored by Mohr and Kasich in the 2018-19 state budget, the prison population actually shrank a bit.

Mohr hopes to see more. He supports, in concept, the idea behind State Issue 1, a measure on the November ballot. It would convert some low-level drug felonies to misdemeanors with no jail time and would grant sentence reductions to prisoners who participate in educational or vocational programs.

Mohr’s work in Ohio was recognized in 2015 by the Association of State Correctional Administrators, which gave him its first annual Tom Clements Innovation Award.

Ohio was lucky to have Mohr at the helm of the agency. We hope to see more movement in the direction he set and wish him well in retirement.

Innovative corrections work is happening at the county level, too; Franklin County’s Pathways program is helping women jail inmates struggling with mental illness and substance abuse to break the cycle of repeatedly returning to jail.

Since Pathways launched in early 2016, more than 100 women have completed the eight-week program, which incorporates art and yoga to coach participants on how to live healthier lives once they are released. Participants create “action plans” for keeping their lives on track, and Pathways helps some find housing and jobs.

The county Office of Justice Policy and Programs should formally assess the Pathways outcomes to know how well it is working, but the hope and gratitude shown by its graduates are encouraging signs that it is making lives better.