CCNO Community Corrections May Be Expanding

Com­mu­nity ser­vice is our main goal to include help­ing com­plete projects that rou­tinely get put on the back burner in com­mu­ni­ties,”…

That was the state­ment issued by Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Jim Den­nis when describ­ing the two com­mu­nity works pro­grams cur­rently being offered through the Cor­rec­tions Cen­ter of North­west Ohio.

While cur­rent work pro­grams only oper­ate in Defi­ance, Ful­ton, Henry and Williams coun­ties, it may be expand­ing to Toledo. Mr. Den­nis said he has been con­tacted by Toledo Munic­i­pal Court in regards to con­cerns about remov­ing the blight in the Toledo area. Offi­cials are giv­ing seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to the two cur­rent work pro­grams being con­ducted at CCNO — the Com­mu­nity Ser­vice Works Pro­gram (CSW) and the Com­mu­nity Pub­lic Works Pro­gram (CPW).

The Com­mu­nity Ser­vice Works Pro­gram was cre­ated in Sep­tem­ber 2013 and cur­rently involves just Williams County. Under the pro­gram, crews of four to six pro­ba­tion­ers are directly super­vised by a CCNO secu­rity offi­cer to per­form var­i­ous ser­vice work. Those pro­vid­ing the work ser­vice are court ordered to per­form com­mu­nity ser­vice work in lieu of jail time.

Since its begin­ning, par­tic­i­pants have worked a total of 1,169.5 hours at sites in Bryan, Stryker and West Unity as well as six Williams County town­ships and the Williams County fair­grounds. Projects involved paint­ing fire hydrants and a build­ing, pick­ing up trash, and per­form­ing clean­ing detail.