Filed
6:00 a.m. EDT
04.10.2025
It got here as a response by lawmakers to a horrific crime. Now, hundreds of individuals imprisoned since 2019 threat extra time behind bars for breaking guidelines.
The Reagan Tokes regulation hyperlinks alleged habits in jail to time served. Individuals who break jail guidelines, particularly for violent or sexual habits, are saved past their minimal time period. Elected judges play no position within the administrative course of that investigates rule violations, determines guilt and provides time.
The Reagan Tokes Act is an Ohio regulation that took impact in 2019 in response to the homicide of a 21-year-old feminine school pupil by a person just lately launched from jail.
The regulation requires judges to provide each minimal and most jail sentences for critical 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 below the Reagan Tokes regulation 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 sporting an ankle monitor below state supervision, he kidnapped, raped, shot and left the physique of Reagan Tokes, an Ohio State College pupil, in a snowy subject exterior Columbus.
As nationwide media picked up the story of a younger lady killed by a person who was presupposed 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 provide the Ohio Division of Rehabilitation and Correction the facility to increase jail time for individuals who break guidelines. The Reagan Tokes regulation was an effort, proponents mentioned, to maintain violent individuals off the streets.
What crimes are coated by Ohio’s Reagan Tokes regulation?
The sentencing regulation 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 establish these circumstances, courts and the state jail system label convictions below the Reagan Tokes regulation as SB201 sentences, a reference to the Ohio Senate invoice that carried the felony sentencing reform.
How many individuals have sentences below Ohio’s Reagan Tokes regulation?
By means of the top of 2024, greater than 14,500 individuals have been sentenced below the Reagan Tokes regulation, in line with knowledge supplied by the Ohio Division of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Just like the total jail inhabitants, practically 90% of individuals sentenced below the Reagan Tokes regulation are assigned to males’s prisons. Black males comprise about 45% of the state jail inhabitants, however practically 60% of individuals imprisoned past their minimal phrases.
How do Reagan Tokes regulation sentences work?
The Reagan Tokes regulation 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 truly be 4 to 6 years in jail.
Below the Reagan Tokes regulation, 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 except jail directors discover the individual responsible of breaking jail guidelines, which may result in serving some or all the most time period.
Individuals are to be launched by the top of their minimal phrases. But when they break sure guidelines, jail directors can prolong the sentence to incorporate some or all the most time period.
How do Ohio prisons implement the Reagan Tokes regulation?
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 critical 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 might 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 an extra 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 must 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 might be appealed to wardens. Guidelines Infraction Board choices might 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 nearly at all times denied.
What occurs in closed-door, additional-time hearings will not be topic to Ohio’s open conferences and public data legal guidelines. Incarcerated individuals who face extra time usually are not given many constitutional rights equivalent to attorneys, the power to query their accuser or entry to proof.
Is Ohio’s Reagan Tokes regulation constitutional?
The Reagan Tokes regulation 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 identical try by the legislature, referred to as the “unhealthy time” statute. That regulation 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 regulation, nevertheless, prohibits the jail system from exceeding the utmost time period of a jail sentence.
The yr the regulation 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 regulation violated constitutional rights to a jury trial below the Sixth Modification, due course of below 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 identical constitutional grounds. Three Ohio appellate courts discovered components of the regulation unconstitutional, whereas others, together with the eighth District Court docket of Appeals overlaying Cuyahoga County, discovered the regulation 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 a number of the greater than 150 appeals that had been ready for a call from the excessive court docket. In 2023, Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Deters to the Ohio Supreme Court docket.
Deters wrote the 5-2 opinion affirming the regulation as constitutional. The ruling ended the talk and compelled defiant county judges to resentence defendants in compliance with the Reagan Tokes regulation.
