Talk:Ohio State Penitentiary

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[edit] Personal experience

Been there, done that. Spent a year in in O.S.P. after 5 in another institution. I was labeled a security threat and shipped there after a short, simple period of undue process. This is shortly before the move of the Death Row inmates to this location. The only good, if you can call it that, of moving the Death Row unit to Youngstown is that now other inmates won't be so at risk of being sent there without cause or justification.

A lot of Ohio's Department of Rehabilitation & Corrections budget and time was invested in the establishment of, and justifying of, their new Super-Maximum security facility. And, once established, it had to be filled. To their dismay, they suddenly realized they didn't have quite the need they first projected. So, now they had a facility in which they could only justify placing a handful of people. This led to a campaign of frivolous placements from around the state for offenses that are considered minor or petty within lesser security intitutions. This has been justified in numerous ways, none of which I will ever waste time arguing, but the bottom line remained the same. They needed to fill beds in order to justify the hiring of a staff comparable to the staff of an institution three times the size of O.S.P.

As for the denial of basic human rights, constitutional rights, and the various forms of physical and mental abuse that take place within those walls... Well, just search "Ohio Supermax Prison" on almost any major search engine and you can find newspaper articles and opinions about the various lawsuits filed by the A.C.L.U., by Amnesty International, and by other human rights groups. Those articles are from more respected sources than me. Just because I survived the place, I'm no expert... And since I was an inmate there, my opinion is obvisoly biased. Maybe it's true what that Correctional officer told me... I'm just a whining- waste-of-time who cries wolf.

I copied this from a newspaper article... Please do your research before you retort.

ACLU volunteer attorney Staughton Lynd said he remains to be convinced that the conditions would be similar to Mansfield.

Lynd contends that the reason for the move is to fill the half empty supermax, which as of Tuesday held 269 inmates in a prison with the capacity for 504.

"One can't help wondering if the real reason is that they built a white elephant, a supermax prison far in excess of the number of prisoners who actually require that level of restriction," Lynd said.

The ACLU questions how the state can save money when the daily cost to house an inmate at Mansfield is $57.73 compared with $157.67 at the supermax, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Web site. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mello (talk • contribs) 15:37, 22 February 2006