The Detention Center
Ashland County Jail
- Operated byAshland County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- Jail address1205 East Main Street, Ashland, OH 44805
- Rated capacity127
- OpenedFebruary 24, 2001
- Average daily populationAbout 110
- BookingsAbout 1,750 a year
- Staff34 corrections officers
Source: Ashland County Sheriff — Corrections · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✗How to post bond — not published
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built2001
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds127
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Kurt J. Schneider
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Corrections Division operates the Ashland County Jail
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
- Office1205 East Main Street, Ashland, OH 44805
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Ashland County Ohio — Elected Officials · checked 2026-09-20
The Judges
Ohio common pleas judges are elected to six-year terms; municipal and county court judges also set bail for people arrested in their areas. They are state judicial officers, not county officials.
Ashland County Circuit Court
- Not found
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-20
The County Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe jail budget, the building itself, and the agreements that send prisoners to a regional jail or rent beds to other agencies. In Cuyahoga and Summit, the elected County Executive and County Council.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and has charge of the county jail by state law (Ohio Rev. Code 341.01) — unless the county uses a regional jail run by a multicounty board.
- NoteThree elected commissioners: Michael Welch (President), Denny Bittle (Vice President), James Justice. County Office Building, 110 Cottage Street, Ashland.
- The boardAshland County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The sheriff's Corrections page names the jail, gives its address, a rated capacity of 127, an opening date of 24 February 2001, an average daily population of about 110 and about 1,750 bookings a year.
- The sheriff's site links its own active-inmate roster (ashland-so-oh.zuercherportal.com); the portal itself blocks automated fetches, so the corrections page that publishes the roster link is cited.
- Fees: the sheriff's own inmate handbook publishes rates — phone calls $0.21 per minute, a $40 booking/processing fee charged to people convicted or held on a probation or parole violation, and medical co-pays of $5 for sick call, $10 for a doctor/dentist/lab request and $5 per prescription.
- No PREA material, deaths-in-custody record, county-posted inspection report, jail contract or bond-posting guidance was found on the sheriff's or county's sites; the county auditor's site publishes no budget document.
- The 2024 ODRC inspection report PDF supplied with this kit returned a 404 at drc.ohio.gov, so the default state-inspection sentence is used. The state's listing for that report named Sheriff Wayne Risner (2024); the county's own elected-officials page and the sheriff's own site both name Kurt J. Schneider now, and the county page wins.
- State inspection/oversight: Ohio's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, through its Bureau of Adult Detention, inspects full-service county jails each year against the Minimum Standards for Jails in Ohio (Ohio Adm. Code 5120:1-8) and publishes the reports on its own website.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Ashland County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-09-20 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered