Filed
6:00 a.m. EDT
04.10.2025
It got here as a response by lawmakers to a horrific crime. Now, 1000’s of individuals imprisoned since 2019 danger extra time behind bars for breaking guidelines.
The Reagan Tokes legislation hyperlinks alleged conduct in jail to time served. Individuals who break jail guidelines, particularly for violent or sexual conduct, are saved past their minimal time period. Elected judges play no function within the administrative course of that investigates rule violations, determines guilt and provides time.
The Reagan Tokes Act is an Ohio legislation that took impact in 2019 in response to the homicide of a 21-year-old feminine school scholar by a person lately launched from jail.
The legislation requires judges to present each minimal and most jail sentences for severe felony convictions. An individual is meant to be launched on the finish of the minimal sentence, however they are often held for the utmost time period for breaking sure guidelines in jail.
Ohio jail officers can even suggest that individuals sentenced beneath the Reagan Tokes legislation be launched earlier than the minimal sentence in the event that they comply with guidelines and take steps to higher themselves.
Why did Ohio lawmakers cross the Reagan Tokes Act?
Whereas serving time for tried rape, Brian Golsby broke dozens of jail guidelines, together with preventing and theft. Simply 4 months after he was launched in 2017, whereas nonetheless carrying an ankle monitor beneath state supervision, he kidnapped, raped, shot and left the physique of Reagan Tokes, an Ohio State College scholar, in a snowy discipline exterior Columbus.
As nationwide media picked up the story of a younger lady killed by a person who was speculated to be monitored by the state, then-state lawmakers Jim Hughes and Kristin Boggs took discover.
“It actually shocked the neighborhood,” mentioned Hughes, who recalled assembly with the native prosecutor on the case and the Tokes household shortly after the assault.
In response, Hughes and Boggs launched bipartisan laws within the statehouse to present the Ohio Division of Rehabilitation and Correction the facility to increase jail time for individuals who break guidelines. The Reagan Tokes legislation was an effort, proponents mentioned, to maintain violent individuals off the streets.
What crimes are coated by Ohio’s Reagan Tokes legislation?
The sentencing legislation covers individuals convicted of first- and second-degree felonies that don’t carry life sentences, together with rape, aggravated theft and assault. It additionally applies to nonviolent crimes like drug possession and trafficking or robberies that don’t contain weapons or bodily hurt.
To determine these circumstances, courts and the state jail system label convictions beneath the Reagan Tokes legislation as SB201 sentences, a reference to the Ohio Senate invoice that carried the legal sentencing reform.
How many individuals have sentences beneath Ohio’s Reagan Tokes legislation?
By means of the top of 2024, greater than 14,500 individuals have been sentenced beneath the Reagan Tokes legislation, based on knowledge offered by the Ohio Division of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Much like the general jail inhabitants, almost 90% of individuals sentenced beneath the Reagan Tokes legislation are assigned to males’s prisons. Black males comprise about 45% of the state jail inhabitants, however almost 60% of individuals imprisoned past their minimal phrases.
How do Reagan Tokes legislation sentences work?
The Reagan Tokes legislation requires county judges to impose minimal and most jail phrases. The utmost is the same as half the minimal.
For instance, a four-year sentence for felonious assault would really be 4 to 6 years in jail.
Beneath the Reagan Tokes legislation, judges give minimal and most jail phrases for first- and second-degree felonies that don’t embody a life sentence. The incarcerated individual is launched on the finish of the minimal time period until jail directors discover the individual responsible of breaking jail guidelines, which may result in serving some or the entire most time period.
Individuals are to be launched by the top of their minimal phrases. But when they break sure guidelines, jail directors can lengthen the sentence to incorporate some or the entire most time period.
How do Ohio prisons implement the Reagan Tokes legislation?
After accusing an incarcerated individual of breaking a rule, a correctional officer recordsdata a conduct report. The officer’s supervisor opinions the report. Minor infractions are punished with restrictions on commissary, telephone calls and different privileges.
The Guidelines Infraction Board handles extra severe violations, like assaults, preventing, sexual acts and possession of medication, weapons or different contraband. If discovered responsible by the panel — composed of parole board members or their designees — the incarcerated individual could stay in segregated housing, be transferred to a better safety jail and, finally, be given extra time.
Individuals discovered responsible by the Guidelines Infraction Board come again to the parole board for a further time listening to, typically held lower than a month earlier than their anticipated launch date. The assembly is much like a parole board listening to, besides the choice to maintain an individual in jail has already been made. It’s only a matter of how lengthy.
On the listening to, officers decide how a lot extra time ought to be utilized, from 30 days per infraction to a yr or extra primarily based on the severity of the damaged guidelines.
What checks and balances are there for individuals disciplined in jail?
Ohio Division of Rehabilitation and Correction officers say accountability is baked into the disciplinary course of.
Listening to officer choices may be appealed to wardens. Guidelines Infraction Board choices may be appealed to ODRC attorneys. Critics argue that the method lacks exterior oversight, particularly from sentencing judges, who’re excluded from offering any enter. Many incarcerated individuals say appeals are virtually all the time denied.
What occurs in closed-door, additional-time hearings shouldn’t be topic to Ohio’s open conferences and public information legal guidelines. Incarcerated individuals who face extra time will not be given many constitutional rights corresponding to attorneys, the flexibility to query their accuser or entry to proof.
Is Ohio’s Reagan Tokes legislation constitutional?
The Reagan Tokes legislation was challenged within the courts from the beginning. County judges from Cleveland to Cincinnati refused to comply with it till a profession prosecutor appointed to the Ohio Supreme Court docket wrote a majority opinion requiring them to take action.
The Ohio Supreme Court docket in 2000 had overturned an analogous try by the legislature, known as the “unhealthy time” statute. That legislation allowed jail officers to make use of guidelines violations and considerations about public security to increase jail phrases past these set by judges. The Reagan Tokes legislation, nonetheless, prohibits the jail system from exceeding the utmost time period of a jail sentence.
The yr the legislation took impact, judges started protesting from the bench by refusing to connect most jail phrases to sentences. Many opposed giving the jail system the judicial energy to increase minimal sentences. Some judges argued that the legislation violated constitutional rights to a jury trial beneath the Sixth Modification, due course of beneath the 14th Modification and the doctrine of separation of energy.
In the meantime, greater than 150 incarcerated individuals appealed their Reagan Tokes sentences on these similar constitutional grounds. Three Ohio appellate courts discovered elements of the legislation unconstitutional, whereas others, together with the eighth District Court docket of Appeals masking Cuyahoga County, discovered the legislation constitutional.
The Ohio Supreme Court docket settled the conflicting choices by accepting two of the appellate circumstances, a drug trafficking conviction in Cuyahoga County and an aggravated theft in Logan County.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters opposed among the greater than 150 appeals that have been ready for a choice from the excessive courtroom. In 2023, Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Deters to the Ohio Supreme Court docket.
Deters wrote the 5-2 opinion affirming the legislation as constitutional. The ruling ended the talk and compelled defiant county judges to resentence defendants in compliance with the Reagan Tokes legislation.
