Ohio’s Latest Bail Reform Will Benefit Defendants and Taxpayers

Effective July 1, 2021, Rule 5.02 of the Rules of Superintendence for the Courts of Ohio establishes the presumption that defendants whose cases are pending should be released on personal recognizance, not cash bail. The rule also requires counties with more than one municipal or county court to adopt a uniform bail schedule. These changes will safeguard the presumption of innocence, relieve pressure on defendants to plead guilty in order to be released from jail, promote social stability by allowing defendants to keep their employment, care for children, etc. and save the taxpayers millions of dollars.

This rule follows updates made last year to Rule 46 of Ohio Rules of Criminal Procedure, which states courts to “release the defendant on the least restrictive conditions that, at the discretion of the court, will reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance in court, the protection or safety of any person or the community and that the defendant will not obstruct the criminal justice process.”

This change is important because it means that individuals facing lower-level charges will not sit in jail simply because they cannot afford to post a cash bond. According to a study by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, raising $400 for an emergency would be hard for nearly half of Americans. Prior to the reform, Ohio courts would routinely set bonds many times in excess of $400 for non-violent, low-level offenses.

Bail reform is vital to protect our constitutional right to the presumption of innocence. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (February 2018), six out of ten people in US jails, nearly half a million individuals on any given day- are awaiting trial. These people have NOT been convicted of an offense. It is harder for someone in jail pretrial to hire an attorney and participate in their defense. Often, people who are jailed pretrial will enter a guilty plea to a charge that they don’t believe they are guilty of simply to get out of jail. Many times the amount of time a person will spend in jail waiting for a court date exceed what would be the normal sentence for the crime they are accused of. In order to get out of jail, back to their job, and back to their families, a person feels pushed to enter a plea simply to stop the financial and emotional bleeding.

Ohio taxpayers stand to benefit from bail reform as well. In a 2020 report, the ACLU of Ohio estimated that Ohioans would save $199 million to $264 million per year by releasing more people promptly.

I am excited to see how this change is implemented in Allen County and the other courts I work in. To a certain degree, we have been seeing more people released pretrial during the past year due to Sheriff’s wanting to keep the jail population down due to Covid-19 concerns. This rule change will make these trends permanent. Allen County only has one municipal court, so it is not required by the Ohio Supreme Court to have a uniform bail schedule, but hopefully, they will develop one. The savings for taxpayers will take some time to reap due to budget commitments and infrastructure currently in place, but in the long term, we will see the benefits. The benefits to people accused of crimes will be immediate.