COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) _ Ohio's prisons department has announced $34 million in grants to local probation departments and courts.
 
The grants will pay for community alternatives to prison, such as substance abuse treatment programs and electronic monitoring, in the hope of reducing crime and keeping low-level, nonviolent offenders out of prison.
 
The grants announced Thursday were authorized under a 2011 law meant to reduce the prison population by rethinking sentences for lesser offenders and ensuring newly released inmates don't end up behind bars again.
 
Gary Mohr, director of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, says treatment in the community is more effective and less costly compared with the same treatment in prison.
 
Ohio prisons hold about 50,000 inmates and are about 130 percent over capacity.