State misused prison funds, suit says -- Inside America's Correctional Facilities

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Date Posted: 20:06:54 02/09/02 Sat
Author: MAJ
Subject: State misused prison funds, suit says

The Columbus Dispatch

Ohio prison officials violated state and federal laws by failing to report and misusing federal funds earmarked for housing violent offenders, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in federal court.

Canton lawyer Norman Sirak alleges that state prisons chief Reginald A. Wilkinson broke state and federal law on 10 occasions in accepting, reporting and spending federal truth-in sentencing grants and other monies.

At issue is $26.7 million in state received monies from the federal government in fiscal years 1996 and 1997.

Sirak alleges that Wilkinson did not report the money in his budget at the appropriate time and that he spent it improperly. He also says the amount received was misreported, placing it just under the threshold tht would have triggered an audit by state Auditor Jim Petro.

The state said it spent federal dollars at the Toledo Institutional Camp, the Orient Correctional Institution, the Pickaway Correctional Institution and the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville.

But no new prisoner beds were added at either the Orient or Pickaway institutions, Sirak said.

"We haven't been privy to the lawsuit as of yet and can't comment," Ohio prison spokeswoman Andrea Dean said.

Joe Case, spokesman for Attorney General Betty D. Montgomery, likewise declined to respond.

The real point of Sirak's lawsuit is to attempt to strip state officials of "qualified immunity" which protects them from being the targets of civil lawsuits.

Courts have ruled that immunity may be waived if there is evidence that the public officials knowingly broke state or federal law.

Last year, Sirak filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the Ohio Adult Parole Authority's handling of caes after enactment of the state's truth in sentencing law in 1996.

The law established definite sentences for crimes committed after the law's enactment date, effectively ending parole for those offenders.

However, the new law did not affect inmates imprisoned before 1996, so many of them are serving longer sentences than those covicted after the law for the same crimes.

In the lawsuit on behalf of 18,000 to 20,000 prisoners hwo went to prison before 1996, Sirak alleges that the law created an unfair and illegal two-tier system n state prisons, with the parole board keeping inmates locked up when they should be released.

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