The Lucas County Correctional Treatment Facility will move to the Toledo Correctional Institution in several phases, eventually housing about 200 nonviolent felony offenders at the North Toledo prison.
Male offenders will move into a former minimal-security “camp” on the prison campus as soon as the first week of April, said Bud Hite, director of the inmate-treatment facility. Women will remain at its current location, 1100 Jefferson Ave., while construction creates more space, he said, with a goal of reuniting the program under one roof in about 18 months.
Such state-funded, community-based treatment programs house nonviolent felony offenders with substance abuse disorders, rather than send them to prison. The move will bring capacity from 140 beds up to about 200, increasing space for both men and women.
The expansion will allow “more people access to treatment,” he said. “Recidivism reduction does not just happen with incarceration,” but rather by finding appropriate treatment. Offerings include chemical dependency counseling and cognitive behavioral programming, and offenders can be sentenced there for up to six months.
Last year Lucas County commissioners announced plans to move the treatment facility to a new jail site on Angola Road near Airport Highway, but that jail proposal was later withdrawn. Current plans call for a new county jail on the 5700 block of North Detroit Avenue.
Mr. Hite said his facility needed to move quickly in selecting an alternate site after previous plans fell through. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction had secured $14 million for construction in the two-year capital budget of brick-and-mortar projects approved by the state legislature in 2016.
Now no remodeling is necessary at the “camp” before the men move in, Mr. Hite said. It was vacated last year as lower-level offenders were transferred out of TCI, located at 2001 E. Central Ave., as it became a Level 4 maximum-security facility. That move closed the minimum-security camp, which will now be used as the treatment facility.
To accommodate additional beds across two locations, 23 more correctional officers and treatment counselors have been hired. Future construction will house female beds, administration, and programming space, he said.
A lease agreement has not yet been finalized, said Cynthia Mausser, managing director of courts and community for the state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. She said the $14 million will be rerequested from the state in the 2019-2020 budget, though construction is not expected to cost that much.
“We thought that was a great alternative to this new build,” she said, referring to difficulties in securing previous proposals. “We are very excited that they will be able to use this.”
Moving into an existing space will reduce the need for new construction by about 30,000 square feet and the overall cost to taxpayers, Mr. Hite said. But final plans are not complete. No decisions have been made about the future of its current location, the 80-year-old former YMCA building on Jefferson in downtown Toledo.
“It's a constant collaboration with the county, state, [and] prison system to figure out how to make something work,” he said. “That's what's made it happen.”
Representatives from the state as well as area leaders in the treatment community will visit the new location March 29, Ms. Mausser said.
Contact Lauren Lindstrom at llindstrom@theblade.com, 419-724-6154, or on Twitter @lelindstrom.
First Published March 20, 2018, 10:00 a.m.
