The Detention Center
Guernsey County Jail (Justice Center)
- Operated byGuernsey County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address601 Southgate Parkway, Cambridge, OH 43725
- Rated capacity66 beds - 54 male, 12 female
- Year built1994
Source: Guernsey County Sheriff's Office - Corrections Division · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓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 — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1994
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds66
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jeffrey D. Paden
- Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's Corrections Division runs the county jail at 601 Southgate Parkway
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
- Took officeAppointed by the commissioners in 2015 and elected in 2016 as the 48th sheriff of Guernsey County
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Guernsey County Sheriff's Office - Sheriff Paden · 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.
Guernsey County Circuit Court
- Cambridge Municipal Court
- Guernsey County Common Pleas Court
- Guernsey County Juvenile Court
- Guernsey County Probate 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.
- NoteThree-member board at 627 Wheeling Ave #300, Cambridge; agendas, minutes and resolutions each have their own page.
- The boardGuernsey County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The Corrections Division page names the jail, gives the Southgate Parkway address, the 66-bed split (54 male, 12 female) and the 1994 build year.
- The inmate list is a vendor-hosted page (community.365labs.com) linked from the sheriff's own site as its inmate list; the page we opened is headed 'Guernsey County Sheriff's Office', so it is counted as the county's roster. The individual records did not render for our reader.
- Calls are collect through ICSolutions and commissary funds can be added by phone or lobby kiosk, but no phone, video or commissary rate is published on the sheriff's site - so fees is 'no'.
- No bond or bail guidance, no PREA material, no deaths-in-custody material, no county-posted inspection report and no jail contracts were found on the sheriff's or county's own pages.
- The commissioners' Minutes page exists on the county site but its table was empty when opened.
- No jail administrator distinct from the sheriff is named on the pages opened.
- 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 Guernsey 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