By: Megan Henry – May 13, 2025
Two Ohio prisons are arming their staffs with tasers through a new, nearly $350,000 pilot program.
Trumbull Correctional Institution staff received Taser 10s last week and Ross Correctional Institution will start staff training this month, said JoEllen Smith, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
The pilot program costs $349,441 a year, which includes training and certifications, Smith said. Staff must complete training to carry the tasers.
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“Over 78% of those currently housed in the department have committed a crime of violence in their lifetime,” Smith said in an email. “This means that the inmates the staff supervise are more dangerous than they have been in the past, and we want our staff to have the tools to do their jobs safely.”
On Christmas Day, an inmate beat Officer Andrew Lansing to death at Ross Correctional. This was the first time an employee was killed by a prisoner since 1996.
“The TASER 10 devices have built-in Bluetooth signaling that is connected to our body-worn cameras,” Smith said in an email. “The body-worn cameras will begin recording if a TASER 10 device is taken off safe mode. The TASER 10 will not fire when it is in safe mode.”
Staff in Ohio prisons do not carry firearms.
Tasers are not to be used for punishment and they are not to be used if the incarcerated person is pregnant or six weeks postpartum, in an elevated physical location, submerged in water, younger than 15 years old, restrained, or riding bicycles or in control of moving vehicles, according to the ODRC taser policy, dated May 6.
The exceptions are “when necessary to protect self or others from an immediate threat of death or serious physical harm threatened by an incarcerated person or anyone else; to prevent or halt the commission of an escape or to apprehend an escapee; or to prevent loss of control of the institution, or a significant part of, or to regain such control,” according to the ODRC policy.
The Ohio Justice & Policy Center is asking ODRC to pause the pilot program.
“Threatening the use of a taser is like threatening to shoot someone,” said Ohio Justice & Policy Center Policy Director Michaela Hahn Burriss. “Just because a taser might make somebody more compliant doesn’t necessarily mean that you de-escalate the situation. Using a taser is force. Tasers are lethal.”
A 2017 Reuters report found 104 prison deaths from 2000-2017 were linked to tasers. The report also detailed hundreds of examples of tasers being misused in U.S. prisons.
“Tasers pose a risk, not only to the incarcerated population, but to employees as well,” Burriss said. “This is something that is well documented.”
At least 95% of incarcerated people will eventually be released, according to the Education Commission of the States.
“Tasers are not going to rehabilitate someone,” Burriss said. “We don’t have a lot of confidence, given what we are experiencing and seeing that this is going to be handled and rolled out in a way that keeps people safe. … These are life and death stakes.”
