The Ohio Senate could soon take up a proposal to end college and technical career education in higher security state prisons and cut off inmates’ access to electronic tablets.
The bill passed the Ohio House late last year on a bipartisan basis.
The legislation stems from an assault on Christmas morning in 2024. An inmate entered an otherwise unattended guard shack and fatally beat Andrew Lansing, an Army veteran who had worked as a corrections officer in Ohio for 24 years, according to an investigation from state prison authorities and a lawsuit from Lansing’s family. The accused inmate has been charged with aggravated murder and awaits trial.
Most of the bill adds stricter penalties for inmates convicted of killing, assaulting, or throwing bodily fluids at corrections officers – the latter of which was described in committee hearings as a frequent occurrence faced by state workers in Ohio’s prisons.
However, the relationship between Lansing’s death and the loss of higher education for more than 1,100 inmates enrolled at Ohio’s level 3 and 4 prisons is less clear.
For Rep. Phil Plummer, a Dayton area Republican and former county sheriff, the goal isn’t deterrence. Rather, he said in committee, “sometimes, the goal is just a consequence.” He didn’t return a phone call.
For Rep. Mark Johnson, a Republican whose district includes Ross Correctional Institution, the lack of higher education in higher security prisons will incentivize inmates toward better behavior to win transfer to a lower security facility.
“Working in these prisons is probably the most dangerous occupation in Ohio right now,” Johnson said in an interview. “We can’t talk about rehabilitation until we get the drugs out of these places.”
The bill also targets what the bill backers described as a worsening intra-prison drug trade, which prison workers told lawmakers was at the root of the violence problem in state facilities. State data shows more than 9,000 inmates were cited for drug consumption-related offenses last year. The bill adds new criminal penalties around the sale of drugs, ends full-contact visitations (which allow physical embraces like hugs) at higher security prisons, and mandates the use of drug-sniffing police dogs.
The House passed the legislation on a broad, bipartisan 82-3 vote. It was backed in committee by prison guards, their union officials, and state prosecutors.
Ohio’s public defenders opposed the bill, arguing that harsh and mandatory sentencing requirements with no option of parole removes discretion from judges and adds to Ohio’s overincarceration problems. And the ACLU opposed as well, adding that some of its provisions have no meaningful relationship with the safety of state employees who staff the jails.
Beyond the bill, some prison officers testified to a sweep of problems at Ross specifically, including safety lapses leading to injured workers, urine thrown at officers, drugs running rampant in the prison, frequent and sometimes fatal overdoses, and others.
Higher education in prisons
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction didn’t testify to lawmakers about the bill, and spokesperson Jenn Truxall said the administration doesn’t comment on pending legislation.
However, Truxall provided data by email showing 831 inmates in Level 3 and 4 prisons are enrolled in higher education, and another 304 are enrolled in career technical education.
Those classes are led through programs within Sinclair College, Wilmington College, Ashland University and Kent State University. Spokespeople for Sinclair, the broadest provider across Ohio’s prisons, and Ashland couldn’t be reached for comment.
Gary Daniels, of the ACLU, said during committee it’s questionable at best whether the education rollback will make Ohio prisons any safer.
Agreeing in part, Rep. Josh Williams, a Republican on the committee and a criminal defense attorney, noted that Ohio’s prisons can overestimate the security risk a given prisoner poses for technocratic reasons and subsequently place him or her in an inappropriate facility. He voted for the bill but voiced interest in an amendment to address this point in the future.
In an interview, Johnson suggested some of the higher education and career and technical education numbers are inflated with no-show enrollees. And he said inmates are using the classes to facilitate the spread of drugs through prisons – he provided no evidence for this, and the matter didn’t come up during committee.
However, he said he’s open to bringing the classes back in some capacity with new “guardrails” further down the line.
Drugs in Ohio prisons
James Skaggs, a corrections officer at Ross Correctional, told lawmakers that he was present the day Lansing died. He said he still visits Lansing’s grave from time to time.
Skaggs was adamant that drugs are the biggest problem in state prisons, and they’re driving a plunge in morale among the workforce and understaffing that’s exposing inexperienced guards to potentially dangerous situations. He said Ohio needs to offer inmates educational opportunities, especially GEDs, but needs to be careful not to reward bad behavior.
He also claimed the drug problem is far worse than ODRC lets on. Specifically, he said he believes at least five fatal overdoses occurred at the prison in 2024 alone, though some were transferred to a hospital before they were declared dead, thereby lowering the prison’s count. He also claimed he remembers one day when 30 nonfatal overdoses occurred at the prison in a 24-hour stretch.
“We’re throwing programs at recidivism,” he said. “But it’ll only lower if you target drugs.”
Truxall, an ODRC spokesperson, said that according to “official death certificates, Ross Correctional Institution reported one confirmed overdose, three undetermined deaths, and 2 homicides in 2024.”
Across all Ohio’s prisons in 2024, ODRC recorded 89,671 rule infractions, a significant jump over recent years. The most common violation (about 12% of all offenses) is the consumption of drugs, according to state figures.
Insurance for spouses of officers killed in the line of duty
Five days after Lansing’s death, the state of Ohio discontinued medical, dental, and vision insurance for his family, according to Darren Price, who said he mentored and trained Lansing at Ross Correctional. Price called the cutoff one of the state’s “most unconscionable failures.”
ODRC declined to answer a question about the claim, referring it to the state Department of Administrative Services, which didn’t respond to an inquiry.
The legislation, however, would require the state to continue to cover those insurance costs for the families of deceased guards indefinitely.