If There Are Children
ORC 2151.31 — the other custody that is not an arrest
This site already has one page about custody that is not an arrest, and this is the second. When an officer takes a child into custody the statute says in terms that it is not an arrest and shall not be deemed one, except for the single purpose of deciding whether it was constitutionally valid. As with the other one, that sentence describes what the custody is not rather than making anybody free to leave.
Who handles this in Ohio: Ohio State Bar Association lawyer referral; and legal aid programs and the state offices, listed in the Ohio directory.
- Reasonable grounds to believe the child is suffering illness or injury and is not receiving proper care, where removal is necessary to prevent immediate or threatened physical or emotional harm.
- Reasonable grounds to believe the child is in immediate danger from their surroundings, where removal is necessary to prevent immediate or threatened physical or emotional harm.
- Immediate or threatened is the phrase carrying the weight in both, and emotional harm is named alongside physical.
A child taken into custody cannot be held where adults under arrest are held. The statute forbids holding such a child in a state correctional institution, in a county, multicounty or municipal jail or workhouse, or in any other place where an adult convicted of a crime, under arrest, or charged with one is held. It is one of the few places in the code where the prohibition is written as a list of buildings rather than as a principle.
If the child is not released, a complaint has to be filed and a hearing held promptly, and no later than seventy two hours after the child was placed in detention or shelter care. The point of that hearing is whether the detention or shelter care is required at all, which is a different question from anything about the underlying allegation.
- Reasonable oral or written notice of the time, place and purpose of the hearing goes to the child and, if they can be found, to the parents, guardian or custodian.
- If they can be found is in the statute. The hearing is not conditioned on a parent being located.
- Before the hearing the court is required to inform the parties of the right to counsel, and to appointed counsel or the public defender where they are indigent.
The court has to hand over a name and a telephone number. Among the things the court must tell the parties before that hearing is the name and telephone number of a court employee who can be reached during normal business hours to arrange the prompt appointment of counsel for anyone who is indigent. Not a general statement that lawyers exist. A specific person, reachable, whose job that is. Almost nobody knows this is in the statute.
The child is also to be told of the right to remain silent with respect to any allegation of delinquency, which is a reminder that one hearing can be sitting on top of two entirely different kinds of case. When It Is A Child covers the delinquency side and the vocabulary that goes with it.
What a county agency does after that hearing, how placement with a relative is decided, and how a case proceeds from there are a body of law this page does not cover. What it covers is the first seventy two hours, because that is the part that happens before anyone has found a lawyer.
Sources for this section (5)
- ORC 2151.31 — Taking a child into custody
- ORC 2151.314 — Hearing on detention or shelter care
- ORC 5122.10 — Emergency hospitalization, and who may take a person into custody
- ORC 2151.352 — Right to counsel in juvenile court
- ORC 2152.02 — Definitions, including delinquent child
Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Applying it to a particular situation is the work of a licensed Ohio attorney.