The Detention Center
Fairfield County Jail
- Operated byFairfield County Sheriff's Office (Jail Bureau)
- Jail address345 Lincoln Avenue, Lancaster, OH 43130
- Rated capacity384 beds
- HousingMinimum, medium and maximum security housing; separate male and female housing with segregation units
- VisitationVideo visitation only; one 20-minute visit a week, scheduled 48 hours ahead
- Vendors namedICSolutions (phones), TextBehind (mail), Access Corrections and Access SecurePak (deposits and packages), Trinity (food), Team Health (nursing)
- ProgramsReentry (REACH, Rise Up), parenting classes, GED preparation via Edovo tablets, art therapy
- Jail AdministratorLieutenant Jeffrey Reed II — Jail commander, promoted July 2024; with the sheriff's office since 2006
Source: Fairfield County Sheriff's Office — Jail Information · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓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 — 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
- Beds384
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Alex Lape
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's Jail Bureau runs the Fairfield County Jail at 345 Lincoln Avenue, Lancaster
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
- Office address345 Lincoln Avenue, Lancaster, OH 43130
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Fairfield 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.
Fairfield County Circuit Court
- Fairfield County Court of Common Pleas
- Fairfield County Domestic Relations Court
- Fairfield County Probate and Juvenile 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: Steve Davis, David L. Levacy and Jeff Fix.
- The boardFairfield County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The sheriff's jail information page publishes the 384-bed rated capacity, the jail commander's name and PREA material — a zero-tolerance statement, a PREA policy PDF and a 2025 PREA annual report, both hosted on the sheriff's own domain.
- 'budget' rests on the county auditor's 2025 Popular Annual Financial Report, which states that "Public Safety expenditures include the operating costs of the Coroner's Office, Probation Department, Sheriff's Office, and the South Central Major Crimes Unit" totalling $32,675,448; the jail is not a separate line.
- No public in-custody roster, bond guidance, fee schedule, contract or county-posted inspection copy was found on the sheriff's or the county's site; the inmate and family resources page names vendors but publishes no rates.
- What was tried: the ODRC 2024 Fairfield County Jail inspection PDF supplied with the prompt (drc.ohio.gov/.../2024_FairfieldCoJail_FSJ_AI.pdf) returned 404, so the default state inspection sentence is used and no report year is claimed.
- The commissioners' own pages link agendas and minutes but no budget document; the auditor's site carries the ACFRs and PAFRs.
- 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 Fairfield 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