Oriana House releases hundreds of halfway house and community corrections residents in wake of coronavirus-related health concerns

Oriana House

Oriana House Inc.this week has released hundreds of residents from multiple halfway house and community-based corrections facilities due to novel-coronavirus infection risks The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Oriana House Inc. in two days has carried out a plan to reduce the population at its facilities by 30 to 40% due to public health risks posed by the novel coronavirus, according to agency officials.

The nonprofit, which this week had roughly 800 clients in halfway house and community corrections beds, has worked with local, state and federal officials to release hundreds of people who were considered low-risk to re-offend, executive vice president Bernie Rochford said.

That includes clients who were within days of being released to home supervision, and many who already were working jobs in the community, he said.

Many of those clients have been placed on home electronic monitors.

Oriana House, which runs community corrections and substance use treatment centers across the state, typically has about 600 clients who are monitored electronically and the now has secured enough equipment to monitor 350 additional people, Rochford said.

Oriana has formulated plans on a client-by-client basis, he said, and has kept jail and prison officials informed of their release plans.

Clients placed in the halfway house by federal prison are harder to release because the process is more onerous, but some clients are being reviewed under policies that allow for compassionate medical release.

Family members of a half-dozen Oriana House residents reached out to The Plain Dealer following a story this week about residents in the crowded facility on East 55th Street in Cleveland. Many were concerned about sanitation and that residents were taking public transportation to jobs and chemical dependency meetings and returning to the facility to sleep in dormitories.

The daughter of one Oriana House resident contacted The Plain Dealer concerned about her father, who is 62, and has multiple health conditions.

“I’m worried about him,” she said. “I’m worried about everybody there.”

Her father is a federal inmate who is serving the final months of a one-year sentence. The Plain Dealer is not using her name or her father’s name because another Oriana House client who also was placed there by the federal prison system was sent back to a federal prison facility after talking to a reporter this week.

The woman said the facility already has had problems with the spread of bacterial and other infections. Residents aren’t allowed to use sanitizers that public health officials are recommending to protect from the spread of the virus, she said.

“My father has a home to come to, a very nice home,” she said.

She said her father works six days a week and is considered a low risk to re-offend because his was a financial crime.

The daughter said her family had contacted the federal Bureau of Prisons residential re-entry management office in Cincinnati and were told a judge would have to sign off on her father getting home, and it wasn’t clear how quickly that type of hearing could happen.

“It is hard because the information keeps changing,” she said.

Other family members said some residents were still being told they were required to attend chemical dependency meetings, which often had more than 10 other people gathered.

Some of the cases present challenges, including ones where a client could be released but does not have an appropriate place to go.

“We don’t want to release someone who would be going to a homeless shelter or a house that is dysfunctional or not safe,” she said.

As clients are released from residential centers, staff will be shifted to backfill the other programs and ensure people are supervised appropriately, he said.

Not all clients will be eligible to be released, he said, including those accused or convicted of sex crimes or violent offenses. Social visits have been stopped for clients who remain, and residential dorms are following a plan from U.S. Army public health officials used to help prevent disease transmission in barracks, which are similar to the residential dorms.

Rochford said the biggest challenge for Oriana House is to meet the needs of clients with substance use disorder, including finding ways to continue lifesaving programming, including counseling. He said clinics that provide long-acting Vivitrol shots in Summit, Cuyahoga, Seneca and Washington counties will remain open.

“My biggest fear is not that crime goes up but that we see people overdosing,” he said.

The ACLU of Ohio has broadly advocated to Gov. Mike DeWine and state health and prison and jail officials on behalf of incarcerated individuals who could be at increased risk of exposure to the coronavirus, because of the close proximity as well as poor health among inmates.

ACLU set up an email hotline earlier this week at covid19@acluohio.org to hear about concerns from people who are incarcerated and their loved ones.

“Things are constantly changing and we are looking for ways to be helpful,” Gary Daniels, Ohio ACLU chief lobbyist said. “Particularly for people who are locked up in many different situations.”

The ACLU is triaging concerns and so far has focused mainly on what it says are “serious and widespread” problems in Ohio’s jails, which generally have more issues with health care than prisons because they don’t have as much oversight as state and federal prisons, Daniels said.

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