The Detention Center
Brown County Sheriff's Office Detention Center
- Operated byBrown County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address750 Mt. Orab Pike, Georgetown, Ohio 45121
- Rated capacityNot published by the county; the state's 2025 inspection report gives 78
- VisitsOn-site video visitation kiosks free; remote video visits for a fee, scheduled by housing block
- Also calledBrown County Adult Detention Center in the state's inspection report
Source: Brown County Sheriff — Inmate & Visitor Information · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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 — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds78 (rated capacity in the state's 2025 inspection report; the county does not publish it)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Chris Hodges
- Runs the jailYes — the county's sheriff page says the sheriff "is administrator of county jail facilities"
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
- Office750 Mt. Orab Pike, Georgetown, Ohio 45121
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Brown County Ohio — Sheriff · 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.
Brown 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: Tony Applegate, Barry Woodruff, Gordon Ellis. Administration Building, 800 Mt. Orab Pike, Georgetown.
- The boardBrown County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The sheriff's Inmate & Visitor Information page names the detention center, gives the Georgetown address and links the county's current inmate roster (brown.miamivalleyjails.org).
- Visitation, commissary and deposit arrangements are described but no phone, video, commissary or booking rates are published, so fees is scored "no".
- Budget: the county publishes annual budgets back to 2016. The 2026 budget was opened and shows "2000-Sheriff" at $5,848,774.56 with detention centre salaries, supplies and medical broken out.
- No rated capacity, PREA material, deaths-in-custody record, county-posted inspection report, contract or bond-posting guidance was found on either county domain.
- The county itself does not post the state inspection report; the state does.
- State inspection/oversight: Ohio's Bureau of Adult Detention inspected the Brown County Adult Detention Center, 750 Mt. Orab Pike, Georgetown, on 10 December 2025 under the Minimum Standards for Jails in Ohio (Ohio Adm. Code 5120:1-8); the report, dated 12 January 2026 and naming Sheriff Chris Hodges, gives the facility a rated capacity of 78 and is published on the state's site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Brown 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