Ohio Governor: Children Sentenced as Adults Are Too Risky for Youth Detention

The Cuyahoga County Justice Center in an undated photo. Credit: Tim Evanson

This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed a proposal designed to keep children convicted of felony crimes in youth facilities instead of immediately sending them to adult prisons.The measure was one of 67 vetoes DeWine issued July 1 in response to the legislature’s passage of the biennial state budget bill. The proposal would’ve affected dozens of young people sent to adult prison each year.

Depending on their age and the seriousness of their crimes, some children convicted of felony crimes under Ohio law, through a process called bindover, may either be rehabilitated by the Department of Youth Services (DYS) until they turn 21 or be sent directly to an adult prison. If put in prison, they must be housed out of sight and sound of adults.

“They’re in a separate wing … isolated from adults, but they don’t get the services that are guided toward juveniles that they would get if they were housed in DYS,” state Rep. Josh Williams, a Lucas County Republican, told The Marshall Project – Cleveland.

Williams proposed, and the Senate approved, a state budget amendment that would have automatically sent children under 18 to youth facilities. The proposal, however, would also have allowed the state director of youth services to transfer the children to adult prison if they posed a risk of harm to themselves or others. Transfers could have also taken place if the youth detention system, which costs nearly 6 times more per incarcerated person to operate, lacked space.

DeWine nixed the idea, saying he believed the measure would put less-violent youth at risk of harm. There are 26 people under 18 currently held in adult prisons in Ohio, according to a prison spokesperson.

“Individuals who are tried as adults are adjudicated so because they are a significant danger to society, according to the criminal justice system,” DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney told The Marshall Project – Cleveland.

The punitive nature of adult prisons, Tierney added, is “different than the purpose of DYS, which is to rehabilitate you, to eventually get them to reenter society and be productive adults. So there’s a public safety issue that these DYS facilities are not equipped for that level of security.”

The cumulative effect of the bill could have been significant, especially for children prosecuted in Cuyahoga County.

A Marshall Project – Cleveland analysis of Ohio prison data found more than 550 people incarcerated in 2023 were admitted as children, including more than three dozen admitted that year. Cuyahoga County led Ohio with a quarter of all incarcerated children being held in adult prisons. The people incarcerated in 2023 who became adults in prison spent more than 430 years combined as incarcerated youth, including 173 people who spent a year or more in adult prison before turning 18.
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