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Coordinates: 41°06′34.85″N 80°34′39.36″W / 41.1096806°N 80.5776°W
The Ohio State Penitentiary is a 502-inmate capacity supermax prison in Youngstown, Ohio. The facility is designed to hold the state's most dangerous prisoners with poor conduct records.
Throughout the last two centuries, there have been two institutions with the name Ohio Penitentiary or Ohio State Penitentiary; the first prison was in Columbus, Ohio.
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Current edifice
Level 5 inmates occupy cells that are 7½ x 11 feet and include a sink, toilet, desk, stool, and a slab of concrete with a thin mattress. These inmates are in lock down for twenty-three hours per day in their cell. Inmates in Levels 5B and 5A are classified as those who fail to adapt or those who are active participants/ring leaders of security threat groups.
Level 4 inmates occupy similarly-designed cells but have additional freedom to move about within specific cell blocks. Inmates classified as Level 4B may also exercise within their specific cell block, but are also required to lock down before security staff enter the cell block to perform range checks, serve food, etc. Inmates classified as Level 4A are not subject to this restriction.
Death Row inmates reside in two cell blocks, one of which is an extended privilege block. To be placed in the extended privilege block an inmate must be free of conduct violations for at least three years.
Ohio State Penitentiary currently holds level 5, 4 and 1 inmates. Level 1 inmates are housed outside of the institutional fence in their own building. Inmates placed in segregation are locked down with the exception of showers.
Legal cases
In 2002, the American Civil Liberties Union won the federal case of Wilkinson v. Austin, requiring certain due process guidelines be used in determining if prisoners can be moved to the facility. The number of inmates dropped after a court-ordered review of individual cases determined that two-thirds of the inmates did not meet the set inclusion guidelines.
In October 2005, a federal judge ruled that the state can move Death Row to Ohio State Penitentiary, while cautioning that he will be monitoring prison officials' efforts to make promised changes to the prison. A majority of Ohio's Death Row inmates have now been transferred to Youngstown. Before the move, the 194 men on Death Row were housed at Mansfield Correctional Institution, where Death Row was moved after the 1993 riots at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Executions have not been moved and still take place at the Lucasville facility.
Original prison
The original Ohio Penitentiary was located in Columbus, Ohio. It was razed in 1998 to make way for the Arena District. During its time of operation, the penitentiary hosted many notable prisoners including James H. Snook and the novelist O. Henry. During the American Civil War, the prison housed members of John Hunt Morgan's Confederate cavalry, who had been detained following Morgan's Raid. Morgan and several of his men successfully escaped captivity and returned to the South.
External links
- [1] Ohio State Penitentiary
- [2] Ohio Death Row Inmates
- [3] Bill Nichols, "Contemplating Torture," Prisonersolidarity.org, Jan. 27, 2006.
- [4] Andrew Welsh-Huggins, "Federal judge allows state to move death row to Youngstown," The Associated Press, Oct. 4, 2005
- [5] Staughton and Alice Lynd, "Prison Advocacy in a Time of Capital Disaccumulation," The Monthly Review, August 2001.
- [6] Daniel Sturm, "Ohio's Abu Ghraib," ZNet, August 3, 2005.
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