Ohio Disciplinary Hearing Reform Documents, Nov. 2003 - Jan 2004
From November 2003 to January 2004, the American Friends Service Committee and the Prison Policy Initiative attempted to stop the enactment of Ohio's new prison disciplinary system. These documents reflect that effort from the initial comment period where we focused on broad issues of policy to the final legislative hearing where we had to focus on more narrow issues of procedure.
Except for one very valuable concession -- preserving the prohibition against hearing officers finding prisoners guilty solely on the basis of past behavior -- our efforts were not successful. In fact, the Department responded to Peter Wagner's comments opposing the shortening of the guiding statement by removing the guiding statement entirely.
The Department claims that our concerns were misguided and that the purpose of the new rules was to have them comply with current practice. Given that they deleted the requirement that punishment be proportional to the prisoner's offense, we think that speaks for itself.
Unfortunately, monitoring how the new policy is interpreted by DRC staff will be doubly difficult given the deletion of the guiding standards and the lack of a proper statistical collection.
While we have moved on to other issues, we have posted these documents in the hopes that they will be of use to the Ohio attorneys that will eventually have to litigate these new rules and to activists in other states.
- Jana Schoeder's Testimony Before the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review [DOC], January 12, 2004.
- Memorandum from T. Austin Stout [DOC], Assistant Chief Counsel, ODRC to Joint Committee on Agency Rules Review, January 12, 2004.
- Memo to Ohio's Joint Agency Rule Review Committee on proposed changes to Ohio's inmate rules of conduct from the Prison Policy Initiative, January 6, 2004.
- Memo from Asst. Chief Counsel for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to Jana Schroeder of the American Friends Service Committee [DOC], December 22, 2003
- Comments on proposed changes to Ohio's inmate rules of conduct submitted to the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction on November 24, 2003 by the Prison Policy Initiative
- Memorandum from Jana Schroeder [DOC], American Friends Service Committee to James Guy, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, November 14, 2003
DRC disciplinary rules rescinded in January 2004
- 5120-9-06 Inmate rules of conduct and statement of policy of institutional rules. [DOC]
- 5120-9-07 Rules of procedure: hearing officer and the rules infraction board for class II rule violations. [DOC]
- 5120-9-11 Security control. [DOC]
Other materials
- Professor Leonard Orland has a whole chapter on "Establishing the rule of law in prisons" in his 1975 book: Prisons: Houses of Darkness (1975)
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