The supreme court of Ohio, the highest court in the state, reviews proceedings of the lower courts and of state agencies. The high court has a chief justice and six associate justices elected to six-year terms. Below the supreme court are 12 courts of appeals, which exercise jurisdiction over their respective judicial districts. Each court has at least three judges elected to six-year terms; the district including Cleveland has nine appeals court judges, and the Cincinnati district has six.
Trial courts include 88 courts of common pleas, one in each county; judges are elected to six-year terms. Probate courts, domestic relations courts, and juvenile courts often function as divisions of the common pleas courts. In 1957, a system of county courts was established by the legislature to replace justices of the peace and mayor's courts at the local level. Large cities have their own municipal, juvenile, and police courts.
In June 2001, state and federal prisons in Ohio had 45,684 inmates, a decrease of 2.5% from the previous year. The state's incarceration rate stood at 402 per 100,000 inhabitants. According to FBI data for 2001, Ohio's crime index total stood at 4,177.6 per 100,000 population, including a total of 40,023 violent crimes and 435,115 crimes against property in that year.
Ohio executed 172 persons between 1930 and 1977, and another 14 people between 1977 and 2003. In 2003, 208 persons were under sentence of death.