The Detention Center
Clermont County Jail
- Operated byClermont County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address4470 State Route 222, Batavia, OH 45103
- Rated capacity512 beds — 128 maximum security, 192 medium security, 192 minimum security
- Average daily populationAbout 300 (corrections page); 283 in 2025 — 212 male, 68 female (2025 annual report)
- ThroughputAbout 7,000 people processed a year; 4,043 booked and 4,029 released in 2025
- Phone ratesLocal prepaid calls $0.10 a minute; interstate long distance $0.20-$0.25 a minute
- Jail AdministratorMajor Chris Allen — Jail Administrator, assigned June 2025; heads the Corrections and Court Services division
Source: Clermont County Sheriff's Office — 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 built1986 (the 128-bed maximum security section opened that year)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds512
Since then
- 192-bed minimum security section opened 1994 and closed 2006
- 192-bed medium security section opened 2006
The Sheriff
Sheriff Christopher E. Stratton
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's office runs the Clermont County Jail at 4470 State Route 222, Batavia
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- Office address4470 St. Rt. 222, Batavia, OH 45103
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Clermont County Sheriff's Office · 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.
Clermont 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-member Board of County Commissioners with its own site at bcc.clermontcountyohio.gov.
- The boardBoard of County Commissioners, Clermont County →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The sheriff's own corrections page names the Clermont County Jail and publishes its 512-bed capacity, its section-by-section opening years and an average daily population of about 300.
- The sheriff's site hosts its own in-custody roster with booking dates, charges, courts, bond types and bond amounts, updated hourly.
- The corrections FAQ publishes inmate telephone rates ($0.10 a minute local prepaid; $0.20-$0.25 a minute interstate), so the fees check is 'yes'.
- The county's 2025 annual report shows spending only by broad function (Criminal Justice, $35,968,339) and does not break out a sheriff or jail line, so the budget check is 'no'.
- No PREA, deaths-in-custody, contract or bond-posting page was found on the sheriff's or the county's own sites; the county does not post its own copy of the state inspection report.
- A press release on the sheriff's site records a corrections officer indicted after a use-of-force investigation; it is not a death-in-custody record.
- State inspection/oversight: Ohio's Bureau of Adult Detention inspected the Clermont County Jail in 2024 under the Minimum Standards for Jails in Ohio (Ohio Adm. Code 5120:1-8); the report, dated 18 December 2024, is published on the state's site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Clermont 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