Greg Harris on Public Safety

If the sales tax to fund a new jail is overturned by the voters on Election Day, what do you propose council does to deal with the shortage of jail space? --Patrick Morrison, Finneytown

First and foremost, we need to do everything in our power to ensure the Comprehensive Safety Plan is approved this November. It's a plan that will keep hardened criminals off the streets, but at the same time fully funds case management teams staffed with proven service providers from several disciplines (vocational, substance abuse, mental health, etc.) to assess and develop personalized intervention strategies and monitored re-entry programs for inmates entering the correctional system so as to dramatically reduce recidivism rates. Today, 7 out of 10 prisoners return to prison. Reducing these numbers will improve public safety, transform lives, and save taxpayers considerable expense.

If the plan fails, we will be forced to revert to a more costly, ineffective status quo that pays other counties to house our prisoners, and maintains facilities like the 107 Queensgate converted warehouse prison that contains no treatment programs.

Regardless if the levy passes, we can do more as a city and region to prevent incarceration. Last February I issued a plan built on innovative strategies to leverage existing federal, state, and local resources to increase educational, training and home ownership opportunities. It would tap over $400 million in available workforce investment and training funds in Ohio in support of strategies to:

• Tap Ohio's significant TANF reserves to fund vocational and certification opportunities in order to move people off public assistance into careers that fill major skills gaps in our region (healthcare, advanced manufacturing, etc.)


• Broker innovative partnerships between education providers such as Cincinnati-based Great Oaks, the largest career and technical center in the country, and the proven Fast Forward program targeting high school drop outs, with community organizations that serve as conduits to at-risk students and the working poor


• Work with local trade unions to expand minority participation in apprenticeship programs


• Cultivate an ownership society among Cincinnati's economically disenfranchised by
  converting more rent subsidies into ownership opportunities for low wage workers by bolstering Cincinnati's participation in the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program

• Work with regional partners and non-profits on more effectively directing Community Development Block Grant funds towards home ownership for low-wage workers
  

• Combat the high costs of being poor by working in partnership with effective consumer education non-profits like Smart Money in Over-the-Rhine to combat the fleecing of the working poor by check and go's; higher interest loans; and predatory lenders