Some statewide changes to policies for county jails could save the Wood County Justice Center money if
implemented.
According to the Associated Press, the new rules – governing issues from how many showers inmates can
take to allowing staff to review their emails for security – will go into effect in the middle of April.

One area that could see savings for the Wood County Jail is an option allowing for inmates to be served
two meals on weekends and holidays instead of three – which is already allowed in Ohio’s prisons.
"I expect it so save money if we were to do it because we would have less labor involved in doing
that," said Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn this morning.
He said the change, if implemented, "would give them the same amount of food" and calories, and
the cost of food would not change either. It is not known how much in labor costs would be saved by the
measure but Wasylyshyn opined that it would be significant.
However, "I don’t know if we’ll institute two meals a day."
He said this possibility has not heretofore been available to Ohio’s 90 full-service jails, which hold
20,000 inmates.
Wasylyshyn said some of the other changes in the rules related to liability issues, and "there are a
lot of standards regarding mental health care and other care in the facility, and we already meet or
exceed all those standards."
In those cases, he said, the new rules appear to be efforts at modernization and "bringing
up-to-speed."
"In Wood County, we’re very fortunate that we have a jail that has mental health people for many,
many hours" a day on staff.
Additional changes in the rules for jails include the ability to restrict inmate showers to every other
day; the monitoring and recording of inmate visits; reduction of mandatory training for inmates; and
disallowing the use of physical force as a punishment.
According to the AP, this is the first time that Ohio’s jails have had a standards update in 11 years.