“With more than enough empty beds at the women’s prisons in Marysville and Cleveland, it made operational sense to close a unit at DCI and shift the distribution of population to these other locations to take some of the demand off corrections officers (at) DCI,” Smith told the Dayton Daily News.
The Dayton Daily News obtained staffing records from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections as state legislators look to implement reforms to address staffing shortages in Ohio’s prisons, saying they put correctional officers at risk.
Dayton Correctional Institution stands out as having the highest vacancy rate in the state, with 18.8% of its budgeted correctional officer positions unfilled at the end of 2025. DCI ended 2025 with 27 vacant C.O. positions.
Smith said the recent decision will help reduce mandated overtime “by lowering the vacancy rate to 9%.”
She said recruitment of staff “has and continues to be” a priority for the agency.
DCI has had a tumultuous few years in terms of correctional officer staffing, according to state data. In 2022, the facility ended the year with a vacancy rate of 6.3%. The rate shot up to 19.4% at the end of 2023, came back to earth in 2024 at 5.6% in 2024, and skyrocketed again in 2025.
Prison staffing was a major focus in November when lawmakers voted 82-3 to pass House Bill 338, a prison reform bill sparked by the death of Andy Lansing, a correctional officer at Ross Correctional Institution who was beat to death by an inmate on Christmas Day in 2024.
Rep. Mark Johnson, R-Chillicothe, whose district includes Ross Correctional and who championed the reform bill, told his peers on the House floor that Lansing’s death was partially due to a lack of staffing, highlighting ODRC’s dependency on using overtime to adequately staff Ohio’s prisons.
At the root of the staffing issues, Johnson alleged, was a slate of problems that ultimately led to an unsafe working environment for correctional officers and other penal institution staff. He said “(Ohio’s) prisons are the most dangerous places of employment, I believe, in the United States. I truly believe that.”
His bill, which now awaits action from the Ohio Senate, would enhance drug monitoring in prisons, restructure incentives like education programs, and enact a slew of mandatory minimums meant to disincentivize assaults on corrections officers, among other things.
The bill was jointly sponsored by Rep. Phil Plummer, R-Butler Twp., who told this outlet last week that he sees it as a primary tool to make staffing Ohio’s prisons easier.
“We have a bill to address a lot of the problems in the prisons,” Plummer told this outlet. “If you have a problem in prisons and the administration is not supporting employees, you’re not going to have any employees (anymore).”
Plummer, who previously oversaw the Montgomery County Jail as county sheriff, said he views the problem as fixable.
“We have some problems, but it’s a work in progress. I think we can fix that,” he said. “You create a culture where you have a safe working environment, the employees are valued, right, they’re paid properly, they have benefits, they’ll come to work. But if they don’t feel valued or safe, they’re out of there.”
Asked if he had any idea why Dayton Correctional Institution would be particularly difficult to staff, Plummer said: “You’re dealing with inmates on death row with nothing to lose. It’s a very tough job.”
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
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