BROWN COUNTY, Ohio (WKRC) - A local prosecutor is taking issue with an Ohio plan that would move some drug dealers out of prison and into county jails.
Budgets are usually about dollars and cents, but a provision in an Ohio House budget proposal is raising concern about safety.
The bill would force people convicted of “felony five” offenses to be housed in county jails rather than state prisons.
One local prosecutor says its sending the wrong message.
Brown County is certainly not immune from the opioid epidemic.
Officials say it has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths of any Ohio county.
So the proposal to move felony five offenders, like heroin traffickers, out of state prisons to county jails, has Brown County Prosecutor Zac Corbin baffled.
The Brown County Jail is already bulging at the seams, some inmates have been moved to Clermont and Butler counties, the prosecutor says, as things stand now, they don’t have room for anymore.
The current Brown County Jail was built to house 38 prisoners. They have sometimes topped 100.
There are currently plans to build an addition that would add 40 beds, but the new jail may be overflowing when it opens.
Should overcrowding continue, Brown County may have no choice but to put heroin traffickers on probation.
Corbin hopes that won't happen.
"The most important issue to me is the message we would be sending drug traffickers,” said Corbin. “[The message being] You’re not going to prison."
Corbin is pushing state lawmakers to increase the penalty for heroin traffickers to a felony four, as it is for other scheduled drugs.
Both the Ohio House and Senate have passed their individual budget plans. A conference committee will now try to hammer out differences in the two proposals.
