The Detention Center
Delaware County Jail
- Operated byDelaware County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address844 US Highway 42 North, Delaware, Ohio 43015
- Booking fee$10.00 once per case (ORC 311.17), per the 2024 inmate handbook
- Admission pack$7.50 for jail-issued hygiene items and footwear
- Video visitsOne free 25-minute onsite visit a week; offsite video visits $15.00 each
- Medical co-paysNurse $10.00, doctor $20.00, dentist $20.00
- Vendors namedICSolutions (phones and visits), GettingOut (messaging), Access Corrections (deposits)
Source: Delaware County Sheriff's Office — Inmate Information · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
5/10Partial- ✓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
- ✗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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jeffrey C. Balzer
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's office operates the Delaware County Jail at 844 US Highway 42 North, Delaware
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01); the site gives a term expiring 1/1/2029
- Office address1776 State Route 521, Delaware, OH 43015
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Delaware 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.
Delaware County Circuit Court
- Delaware County Court of Common Pleas (General Division)
- Delaware County Domestic Relations Court
- Delaware County Juvenile Court
- Delaware County Probate Court
- Delaware Municipal Court
- 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.
- NoteCommissioners named on the county page: Jeff Benton, Barb Lewis and Gary Merrell. Session agendas, calendars and journals are published in the county media room.
- The boardDelaware County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The sheriff's PREA page publishes the office's PREA policy, a 2025 PREA annual report and a PREA facility audit report and certification, all as PDFs on the sheriff's own county subdomain.
- 'budget' rests on the county auditor's 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, which states that "The Public Safety Program consists of costs associated with operation of the Sheriff's Department, County Jail, and Emergency Medical Services Department" and reports $68,421,000 of public safety expenses; the jail is not broken out on its own line.
- 'fees' rests on the 2024 inmate handbook on the sheriff's site, which publishes the $10 booking fee, $7.50 admission pack, $15 offsite video visit and medical co-pays.
- Neither the jail pages nor the handbook state a rated capacity or bed count, and no year built or construction cost was published anywhere we opened.
- The current-inmate page is a landing page linking the county's own jail listing (jtlist); no county-published deaths-in-custody record, inspection copy or jail contract was found.
- 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 Delaware 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