COLUMBUS – U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) was in Columbus Thursday to promote bipartisan programs aimed at prison reform and reducing recidivism.

  • First Step & Second Chance Acts
  • Programs aimed at reducing recidivism rates

“Right now, we have too many people leaving the prison system, getting out of jail, then getting rearrested, and get back into the system again, which hurts everybody,” he said.

Portman spoke at a Department of Justice Stakeholder Session on Reentry held at Alvis, a non-profit agency in Columbus that works to help ex-convicts successfully re-enter society through mental health and drug abuse treatment services.

He was there promoting the First Step & Second Chance Acts. The First Step Act was legislation he co-sponsored and became law in December, and included the reauthorization of his Second Chance Act, a law that supports state and local reentry program to reduce recidivism.  

 Portman first co-othered the Second Chance Act when he was in Congress, along with late-Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones. It was first signed into law in 2008 and has been reauthorized since then. Portman said Ohio has received more than $39 million in Second Chance Act grants since 2009, and as of June 2018, more than 164,000 individuals have participated in the two programs.

“In the prison system itself under the First Step Act, it has sentencing reform, so that people are not sentenced inappropriately,” Portman explained.  “It also has programs to encourage people when they get out to do better, so drug treatment programs for addicts who have never had treatment before.”

The latest recidivism rates for Ohio (2017) show the overall three-year rate for inmates released from Ohio prisons is 30.73 percent, meaning about a third of inmates returned to prison within three years.