Why No One in Ohio Prisons Has Been Released Early Under Reform Law

In the ultimate month of his two-year jail time period, a guard ordered Lamont Clark Jr. right into a cramped workplace.

Towards the blurred background of a pc display screen, a professionally dressed girl appeared on digital camera and defined that Clark wouldn’t be going residence to Cleveland. A brand new state legislation required that he spend one other 12 months in jail.

The rationale: One other incarcerated particular person claimed that Clark had attacked him in 2023 throughout a riot at Lake Erie Correctional Establishment.

“They by no means informed me who I allegedly assaulted. They only mentioned, ‘Someone mentioned you assaulted them, and also you’re responsible,’” Clark informed The Marshall Challenge – Cleveland this 12 months, after serving the additional time.

Lots of of incarcerated folks like Clark are denied launch from Ohio prisons every year beneath Senate Invoice 201, higher often called the Reagan Tokes legislation.

Enacted in 2019, the legislation was designed to guard the general public with a carrot-and-stick strategy to incarceration. It gave jail directors unique powers so as to add time for individuals who misbehave behind bars, or to advocate early launch for many who observe the principles.

However as critics predicted, the legislation has solely led to longer incarceration.

Not a single particular person has been launched early, in response to a Marshall Challenge – Cleveland evaluation of jail data for the previous six years. In the meantime, 700 folks — principally Black males — have been denied launch on account of added time.

The Marshall Challenge – Cleveland investigation discovered no exterior oversight or inner auditing of administrative choices to elongate incarceration. Folks accused of violating jail guidelines will not be afforded primary authorized rights to have entry to legal professionals, to problem their accusers or to evaluation proof.

“If you give this type of unchecked energy to folks, it should be abused,” mentioned protection lawyer Andrew Mayle, who fought for the legislation’s constitutionality to be challenged within the Ohio Supreme Court docket in 2023.

The legislation was the legislative response to the 2017 homicide of Reagan Tokes, a 21-year-old Ohio State College pupil, by a person just lately launched from jail.

Lawmakers sought to make sure public security by retaining different probably violent folks locked up longer.

This newest pendulum swing in Ohio’s prison sentencing legal guidelines created a brand new class of incarcerated individuals who threat not solely solitary confinement and lack of privileges, but in addition longer jail stays for violating guidelines. It’s a partial return to the indefinite sentencing that Ohio legislators changed with mounted jail phrases throughout the in style truth-in-sentencing motion of the mid-Nineteen Nineties.

Below the Reagan Tokes legislation, judges should once more give minimal and most jail phrases for first- and second-degree felonies.

Greater than 14,500 folks, almost a 3rd of Ohio’s present jail inhabitants, have been sentenced beneath the Reagan Tokes legislation.

Critics argue that with no requirement to inform elected judges earlier than including some or the entire most time period, lawmakers handed unchecked, extrajudicial energy to unelected jail directors.

Protection legal professionals and advocates for incarcerated folks had warned that jail officers would doubtless abuse the ability to maintain folks past their minimal jail phrases. However they remained cautiously optimistic that the Ohio Division of Rehabilitation and Correction may additionally reward individuals who observe guidelines and full programming by decreasing their phrases.

However the company’s studying of the legislation — selecting a extra burdensome requirement for early launch — has denied the entire greater than 120 petitions by incarcerated folks to cut back their minimal jail phrases.

In the meantime, alleged guidelines violations leading to added time have amounted to about 830 extra years of incarceration, costing taxpayers $32 million based mostly on whole operational prices per prisoner.

“This was by no means pitched as a one-way ratchet, the place sentences solely get elevated and never decreased,” mentioned Matthew Ahn, director of the Past Guilt challenge at Ohio Justice & Coverage Middle. “…What we’ve is simply one other accelerator towards runaway incarceration, towards runaway spending on corrections and imprisonment.”

The legislation’s implementation additionally tracks racial disparities that worsen the deeper folks transfer into the prison justice system. Black males make up lower than 7% of Ohio’s inhabitants and a staggering 59% of these given further jail time beneath the legislation. Cuyahoga County is residence to only 10% of Ohio’s inhabitants and almost 23% of these stored past their minimal sentences.

Ohio jail spokesperson JoEllen Smith mentioned that Director Annette Chambers-Smith “rigorously reviewed and thought of” every petition for early launch earlier than denying all of them. Chambers-Smith declined to remark.

The denial of greater than 120 requests for sentence reductions hinges on jail officers’ interpretation of the Reagan Tokes legislation, which established two standards for early launch: adjustment to incarceration or distinctive conduct. Nothing in state legislation or jail coverage requires directors to select one or the opposite earlier than recommending that sentencing judges shave as much as 15% off minimal jail phrases.

State guidelines outline adjustment to incarceration nearly as good conduct, a low safety stage and no affiliation with jail gangs. Jail directors, nevertheless, say lawmakers set unattainably excessive requirements for distinctive conduct, which embody voluntarily finishing neighborhood service and rehabilitative programming, retaining constructive relationships with the surface world and mentoring others.

Critics have maintained all alongside that, to cut back returns to jail, lawmakers ought to have addressed the dearth of constructive programming in prisons.

“The issue with the Reagan Tokes Act has at all times been that it’s extra stick than carrot,” mentioned lawyer Nicole Clum, who advocated for a extra balanced strategy as a former legislative liaison on the Workplace of the Ohio Public Defender.

“If people are at all times given their most sentence and by no means given aid for good conduct, they don’t have any incentive to interact in rehabilitative efforts,” she mentioned. “Ohioans are higher served if incarcerated people have hope.”

In any other case, she added, there’s “no cause to interact in rehabilitation. Inevitably, this makes Ohioans much less protected.”

Prisons don’t monitor the explanations folks get further time. So, The Marshall Challenge – Cleveland spoke to dozens of incarcerated folks and reviewed paperwork in 30 current instances by means of a public data request that took officers six months to meet. Rule violations for assaults and different sexual misconduct — up 45% and 75%, respectively, since 2019 — look like driving a lot of the extra time, the restricted evaluation discovered.

Jail directors couldn’t say whether or not the specter of longer sentences beneath the Reagan Tokes legislation may counter rising ranges of violence in Ohio prisons. One official instructed that the legislation must apply to half of Ohio’s jail inhabitants to be able to examine its impact.

These punished by the legislation describe being locked up with cellmates who violently lash out throughout psychological well being episodes or whereas abusing medication.

Lifers with little or no likelihood of parole extort cash and commissary funds from folks marked by Reagan Tokes sentences. They’re straightforward prey, some males mentioned. In the event that they combat again, they threat extra time in jail. Their aggressors know that, so that they pay up or take their beatings.

“Someone with life mentioned they have been going to stab me as a result of we stored arguing. … So, I needed to punch him. I needed to defend my life in these circumstances,” mentioned Edward Navone, who’s spending an additional 12 months at a maximum-security jail in Lucasville after correctional employees discovered him responsible of assault.

The brand new legislation isn’t simply impacting prisoners, however taxpayers as nicely.

When lawmakers launched the Reagan Tokes Act in 2017, jail officers informed the legislature that further prices can be minimal if sentencing courts accepted their suggestions to cut back sentences for good conduct. However no such suggestions have been made.

As a substitute, Gary Daniels of the Ohio ACLU extra precisely predicted what would occur when he testified in a 2018 committee listening to on the proposed invoice.

“Below a extra real looking state of affairs, (the legislation) will dramatically improve our jail inhabitants by lots of per 12 months for the subsequent a number of years,” Daniels mentioned.

Former Ohio Sen. Kevin Bacon and Rep. Jim Hughes, Republicans who co-sponsored the Reagan Tokes Act with state Senate and Home Democrats Sean O’Brien and Kristin Boggs, mentioned any legislation is price revisiting.

Bacon mentioned he was “shocked” to listen to that each one requests to cut back jail phrases have been denied.

“I’m hoping that it’s a case the place … whether it is imbalanced, it is imbalanced to guard the general public,” mentioned Hughes, including that the state is “coping with the worst of the worst.”

Boggs and O’Brien are actually judges. Neither would speak publicly.

The legislation supplies no checks on how public or personal jail employees allege and examine misconduct, or decide guilt. There’s no exterior oversight and no annual auditing.

Disciplinary choices made behind closed doorways by appointed members of the Ohio Parole Board could also be appealed to legal professionals who work for the state jail system. However documentation from these choices is exempt from public data legal guidelines. Judges, who can be required to approve early launch, don’t have any say in whether or not time must be added. They’re not even notified.

“Actually the choose ought to have a say if you are going to be held over,” mentioned Mayle, the protection lawyer who argued in opposition to the legislation.

Mayle mentioned he couldn’t consider a political or authorized cause for eradicating judicial oversight apart from to offer unilateral authority to state jail officers.

“However then once more, prisoners will not be a really influential physique politic. They’re straightforward to dump on,” Mayle mentioned, including that “there may be an financial incentive for individuals who work within the jail enterprise, whether or not they work for personal or public prisons, to have prisoners.”

Those most affected by the legislation say they’ve been denied primary due course of protections.

Clark, like different males accused by fellow prisoners of rioting at Lake Erie Correctional Establishment and later given further time, was discovered responsible beneath a veil of authorized and literal darkness.

An influence outage hit the privately owned and operated jail in August 2023. The lights and digital camera went darkish when the backup turbines failed. Involved for their very own security, correctional officers deserted their patrols inside pitch-black pods.

With no surveillance footage or official witnesses, investigators relied solely on confidential sources — different incarcerated males — to determine the alleged rioters and swiftly transfer them into solitary confinement cells.

Till then, Clark had a clear disciplinary report. However investigators by no means requested him what occurred the evening of the riot. As a substitute, he and others acquired almost equivalent conduct studies from the identical investigator. Every report referenced confidential statements as the one proof in opposition to them.

One incarcerated man informed officers he was with Clark “all evening and he by no means touched anybody.” It didn’t matter. Disciplinary data present that directors believed the confidential sources.

Clark was loaded onto a bus as waves of males left Lake Erie Correctional Establishment for higher-security and extra violent prisons. As their scheduled launch dates neared, one after the other, they acquired their further time.

Lamont Clark Jr. in February 2025. Clark was launched from an Ohio jail in January after serving an additional 12 months after being accused of collaborating in a riot.
Da’Shaunae Marisa for The Marshall Challenge

Dozens of incarcerated folks informed The Marshall Challenge – Cleveland that the legislation’s lopsided rollout and its empty promise of rewarding good conduct had left them demoralized.

“It’s irritating,” mentioned Jose Padilla III at Belmont Correctional Establishment. “Folks get discouraged. Once they discover out they’re not getting out, that’s once they get a ticket (or rule infraction). Folks simply surrender. What’s the purpose?”

A number of males mentioned violence breeds violence. Fists and weapons are survival instruments. Extra jail time doesn’t deter their use when individuals are threatened with bodily hurt or worse.

“They put lots of people in dangerous conditions and count on them to be angels,” mentioned Clark, who was lastly launched from the notoriously violent Lebanon Correctional Establishment in January after serving his further 12 months.

The Marshall Challenge – Cleveland additionally spoke to dozens of people that seem to fulfill the minimal eligibility necessities to petition for early launch. No less than 4, together with two who filed after being contacted by a reporter, have been denied for causes that included the crimes for which they’re serving time.

“It simply says previous prison historical past,” James Fleming mentioned of the denial letter he acquired in June.

Fleming mentioned he’s had no tickets in his three years of imprisonment. He’s been trusted with a upkeep job at Belmont Correctional Establishment, a minimal safety jail in southeast Ohio. He mentioned he needs to raised himself and atone for his mistake.

“I’ve accomplished just about any programming I can get into since I’ve been in right here,” Fleming mentioned.

A number of males mentioned they didn’t beforehand know that they might ask for decreased sentences. Others have been discouraged from making use of by employees.

“I might by no means get anybody right here to assist me totally perceive it,” mentioned Padilla. “So, I gave up on making an attempt to get what paperwork I would wish.

“I’m not saying I’m not sorry about my crime,” he continued. “However I do wish to get out and higher my life. That’s what I’ve been engaged on in right here.”

Correction: An earlier model of this text incorrectly spelled Lamont Clark Jr.’s first title.