A PRISON IN NEED OF CORRECTIONS

Ohio prison officials have been busy lately closing down parts of
several state lockups due to budget problems. Now maybe they can
afford to pay closer attention to problems of another sort: management
lapses at the Toledo Correctional Institution.

Khelleh Konteh, warden of the North Toledo penal facility, sounded a
bit too cavalier when he declared, "This is a new place ... it takes a
while for people to realize what can be tolerated and [what is] not
tolerated."

Does the warden mean that, in the two years since the prison was
opened, staff members have not caught on to the fact that marijuana in
the commissary is not a good thing and that sexual contact with
inmates is not an approved recreational activity?

If that's the case, they're slow learners and should be replaced. If
prison management hadn't forcefully made the workers aware that such
activities are unacceptable, well, that's another problem that needs
to be corrected immediately. One could argue that such warnings should
not be necessary, but evidently one would be wrong.

Perhaps Reginald Wilkinson, director of the state Department of
Rehabilitation and Correction, needs to take a personal look at what's
going on at TCI. Such problems, which now appear to be of modest
proportions, must not be left to fester and multiply.

We supported placement of the prison in Toledo as a vehicle for
economic growth in a depressed part of town, even though the city went
to significant expense and controversy to condemn 19 homes in the old
Goose Hill area. But TCI, announced as a state project in 1995 by
then-governor George Voinovich, hasn't entirely lived up to its hype.

While its construction budget originally was set at $73 million, the
facility ended up costing at least $99 million.

Those who built and inspected the prison neglected to note that more
than half of its pre-cast concrete outside walls lacked insulation.
The problem wasn't isolated and remedied until after frigid weather in
the winter of 2000-2001 made the place impossible to heat.

Gov. Bob Taft, who officially opened the prison with fanfare in July
2000, spoke glowingly of 403 "recession-proof jobs" and an annual
payroll of $26 million. The reality so far is 306 regular staff
members, plus 38 contract employees, with a payroll for the current
fiscal year of about $21.5 million.

TCI was built with space for 999 close-security prisoners plus another
186 minimum-security inmates in a separate prison camp. This week, the
census counted 588 in the main facility and 176 in the camp.

With an annual operating budget of $24.5 million, the prison does give
Toledo a needed economic boost. Some added attention to the way it's
being run would improve the overall picture even more.