The Ohio Organizing Collaborative and our partners are working together in support of a ballot initiative that will reform our criminal justice system and reinvest millions of dollars into drug treatment and community-based recovery programs. We will organize across urban, suburban, and rural communities impacted by the War on Drugs, and we will expand the electorate to include more people of color, low income communities, and young people directly impacted by a broken criminal justice system.
The Ohio Neighborhood Safety, Drug Treatment, and Rehabilitation Amendment would do four things:
1. Reclassify low-level drug possession felonies (F4 and F5's only) as misdemeanors, because people struggling with addiction need treatment, not prison. The amendment would reclassify from fourth or fifth degree felony to misdemeanor crimes for obtaining, possessing, or using a drug or drug paraphernalia. All current drug trafficking felonies would remain felonies. The amendment would allow the reclassification to be done so people currently in prison for F4 or F5 possession-only offenses could be released, and people with past drug-possession felonies could get them reclassified, opening up job opportunities for thousands of Ohioans.
2. Cut-off the probation-to-prison pipeline. Twenty-three percent of the people coming to Ohio’s prisons each year (about 4,700 annually) are being sent to prison for probation violations - not new crimes. Minor violations - such as missing a meeting with a probation officer due to a work commitment - often result in prison time for people who are working to get their lives back on track. The amendment would prohibit prison sentences as punishment for probation rule infractions that are not new crimes.
3. Incentivize personal rehabilitation in prison. Data and personal stories demonstrate that safety and rehabilitation improve when people receive days off of their prison terms for participating in quality programming. The amendment would expand the ability of current inmates to earn these modest sentence reductions.
4. Invest savings in community health. The first three reforms will safely and significantly shrink the prison population. The amendment will then redirect the savings into local treatment and support programs for youths and adults — further improving safety and decreasing our state’s reliance on prisons to solve social ills.