We need to provide better support for Ohioans returning from prison
Posted April 22, 2024 in Op-Eds
This piece was previously published on Cleveland.com and is reprinted here with permission.
It’s Reentry Week in Cuyahoga County, dedicated to raising awareness about how we support (and too often fail to support) Ohioans who return home after being incarcerated.
First, some facts about whom we imprison:
Ohio held 71,000 people behind bars in 2023, according to the Prison Policy Institute.
Because our legal system treats Black Ohioans more punitively at every level of interaction -- from police stops to charging decisions, through prosecution, conviction and sentencing -- Black people are overrepresented in prisons.
Because Ohio is more likely to incarcerate people with low incomes and mental illness, and because Black women are pushed by historic and contemporary misogynoir into the lowest-paying sectors of the workforce and have fewer culturally competent avenues for health care, Black women are overrepresented among imprisoned women.
These facts raise important questions for policymakers. Chief among them should be: How can we help people who are leaving a prison system that disproportionately harms Black Ohioans and who are entering an economy that is already stacked against them?
Whatever your answer, employment likely plays a part. Finding a job is one of the most important steps toward readjusting to life after prison. In fact, being employed is often a condition of release: A newly free person could be locked up again simply for struggling to find work.
But Ohio hamstrings people coming out of prison with hundreds of laws and rules -- collectively referred to as collateral sanctions -- that limit their job, education and housing opportunities.
While some make sense -- a person who’s been convicted of embezzlement shouldn’t be allowed to oversee a company’s finances, for example -- many more are overly broad and counterproductive, pushing formerly incarcerated people to the margins of the legal economy -- or out of it altogether.
In 2020, the legislature enacted the Fresh Start Act, updating some of those restrictions. A new bill could do even more to help smooth the transition back for many Ohioans, of all races, released from prison.
Senate Bill 198 would provide Ohioans leaving prison with the basic documentation they need to navigate post-prison life, including a state I.D. or temporary I.D. from the Registrar of Motor Vehicles.
Those with a Social Security number would receive a Social Security card. Those who completed vocational training in prison would receive documentation of that training. Those who worked while incarcerated (as most Ohio prisoners are required to do) would be provided with a record of that work.
The bill would require Ohio to inform people of any licenses they qualify for and would provide people leaving prison with a resumé and a practice job interview.
These are the bare bones of a fresh start -- the least the state can do, aside from nothing -- to help formerly incarcerated people land on their feet.
Better support for formerly incarcerated people is a small part of the fundamental changes advocated by grassroots organizations like Building Freedom Ohio and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless.
A few improvements to the way we treat people released from prison will not fix the racist system that put them there in the first place, but they are improvements.
If you’re looking for ways to ease reentry for Ohioans of all races -- and Black Ohioans especially -- support the essential work of those organizations.
And in the meantime, tell your representatives to pass S.B. 198.