Help the Long Ignored Old-Law Prisoners
Write a letter to Governor Strickland

about the continued denial of parole to old-law prisoners (prisoners sentenced before 1996). In 1996 a truth-in-sentencing law was passed in Ohio, but was not made retroactive — probably for political reasons.

You could make one or more of the following points:

• There are 3,300 old-law inmates eligible for parole who have been in at least 14 years and some for decades
  
  
  • That's long enough
  • Many have worked hard to rehabilitate themselves, but the Parole Board routinely does not look at their record inside or their accomplishments
  
  
• Unfairness
  
  
  • Old-law prisoners are serving longer time than judges expected when they were sentenced — because of changes in Parole Board practice
  • New-law prisoners receive with few exceptions much shorter sentences for same crimes
    
    
• Cost, overcrowding of prisons
  
  
  • Substantial contribution to the dangerous overcrowding of Ohio prisons. Ohio prisons are almost 12,000 inmates over capacity (32% over). The 3,300 old-law inmates eligible for parole contribute more than a quarter of that overcrowding.
  • If the eligible old-law inmates were released, as is just, and no prisons were closed, then ODRC could reduce overcrowding by more than a quarter, and in addition save over $14 million every year from now on.
  • Alternatively, ODRC could close one or more prisons, as Terry Collins observed last October. If the 3,300 eligible old-law prisoners were released and prisons with capacity totaling 3,300 were closed, that would save the state over $83 million dollars annually.
  
  
• Tapes (audiotape or videotape) of Parole Board hearings are needed so that inmates' counsel can tell if the hearing was meaningful, as required
  
  

Important: Add this postscript to your letter: Please do not forward my letter to the Department of Corrections (DRC) or Parole Board. I am asking you to give direction to DRC and the Parole Board.