COLUMBUS, Ohio — In the early days of the pandemic some correctional institutions made changes in order to mitigate spread of COVID-19.

What You Need To Know

  • Ohio prisons have been overpopulated for years, including during the pandemic

  • During the pandemic, there was a dip in the prison population in order to mitigate spread of COVID-19

  • Numbers are trending upward again, which could be because of various reasons 

Ohio’s prison population is starting to revert back to pre-pandemic levels. While our state prisons are only meant to hold about 38,000 people, we’ve seen our prisons operating over capacity for a while. Numbers have hovered around 50,000 inmates for years. However, we saw a dip during the pandemic.

Courts slowed sentencing and convictions, prisons paused transfers, and nonviolent offenders were either released or moved to confinement. While prisons always stayed over capacity, their populations are reverting back to pre-pandemic trends. There are a multitude of reasons for the increase. The ACLU Ohio said that it could be a result of a backed criminal justice system.

“(Convictions and sentencing) could be working its way through the criminal legal system,” said Gary Daniels, who serves as a spokesperson for ACLU Ohio. “It gets to the point where somebody is actually going to prison, and those numbers are being reflected now in the numbers and the data that we see.”

While Ohio has seen a slight increase in prisoners again, it’s not as bad as other states. According to the Department of Justice, Ohio saw a less than a 1% increase in state and federal prisoners between 2021 and 2022. In comparison, Mississippi saw a 14.3% increase in the same time period. However, there’s been a gradual increase, with the latest numbers showing a 328 prisoner increase from Jan. 2022 to Jan. 2023.

From Jan. 2023 to Jan. 2024, Ohio saw a 1,174 prisoner increase. Drug possession is the number one reason people are going to prison in the state. It’s a crime that ACLU Ohio said could benefit from other corrective action in order to help to address the overcrowding issue.  

“You’re not going to meaningfully combat drug addiction or drug problems by sending that person to prison,” said Daniels. “Many of these people end up coming out of prison worse than when they went in.”

ACLU Ohio hopes to see more preventative legislation that will help keep people from going to prison in the first place.