The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byErie County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address2800 Columbus Avenue, Sandusky, OH 44870
- Bond"bond in the correct amount must be posted in the form of a money order only" (surety bonds excepted)
- VisitationVideo visits daily, 7:00-1:45 and 2:15-5:30; lobby kiosk visits carry no charge, remote visits carry an unstated fee
- Vendors namedCorrectional Billing Services (phones); inmatecanteen.com (commissary and messaging)
- Separate juvenile facilityThe Erie County Detention Center, 1338 Tiffin Ave., Sandusky, holds youth pending further court action — Director Brenda Wainwright; Robert Wikel, Superintendent of Corrections
- What was tried— the county's Jail FAQs page does not use a formal facility name
Source: Erie County — Jail FAQs · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗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
- ✗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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Paul Sigsworth
- Runs the jailYes — the Erie County Sheriff's Office runs the county jail at 2800 Columbus Avenue, Sandusky (county Jail FAQs page)
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
- Name not confirmedThe name comes from the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association directory and was not confirmed on any Erie County page we could open
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association directory (not a county page; unconfirmed) · 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.
Erie County Circuit Court
- Not found
Still needed
- 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 under Ohio Rev. Code 305.01. No commissioners' page or minutes file on the county site could be opened (403).
- The boardErie County Board of Commissioners
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- RESCUE PASS: eriecounty.oh.gov/sheriffsoffice.aspx opened here after returning 403 to the group's research.
- The county's own Jail FAQs page explains how to post bond — money order only, payable to the court of jurisdiction, with surety bonds accepted at the jail from an approved agent and Vermilion Municipal Court bonds taken only at that court.
- The sheriff's page links a Jail Roster as the county's own in-custody lookup; it is served by a vendor (jdsinc.net).
- Video visitation is offered both for a fee from outside the jail and free of charge at lobby kiosks, but no rate is published; commissary deposit methods are given without rates, so fees was not scored.
- The county publishes its Public Records Policy and Records Retention Schedule as PDFs on its own domain.
- Capacity, budget, deaths, PREA, the county's own inspection copy and contracts were not found.
- Erie County's website fought every request: only the Jail FAQs page opened. This entry is deliberately thin.
- What was tried and refused: eriecounty.oh.gov/sheriff and the https root (403); SheriffsOffice.aspx and GeneralInformation.aspx opened but returned unrelated content (a health department alert and an employment notice), so no sheriff name could be confirmed; the county's own jail policy manual PDF (eriecounty.oh.gov/Downloads/Erie_County_Jail_Policies_and_Procedures.pdf) returned 403; the county booking search at inmate.eriecounty.oh.gov was refused by robots; a commissioners' session PDF returned 403.
- 'bond_info' is the one check earned: the Jail FAQs page states how bond must be posted.
- The county names a jail address and jail FAQs but no formal jail name appeared on any page we opened, so 'named' is 'no' rather than a guess.
- The Erie County Detention Center on Tiffin Avenue is the county's juvenile facility, not the adult jail — recorded here so the two are not confused.
- 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 Erie 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