The Detention Center
Hancock County Justice Center
- Operated byHancock County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address200 West Crawford Street, Findlay, OH 45840
- Rated capacity98 beds
- Year built1989
- ExpansionCapacity raised from 96 to 98 beds in 2002
Source: Hancock County Sheriff's Office - Corrections · 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 built1989
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds98
Since then
- Capacity raised from 96 to 98 beds in 2002
The Sheriff
Sheriff Michael A. Cortez
- Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's Corrections Division runs the Hancock County Justice Center
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Hancock 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.
Hancock 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.
- NoteBoard page could not be opened; the county domain repeatedly refused robots.txt.
- The boardHancock County Board of Commissioners
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- The sheriff's Corrections page names the Hancock County Justice Center, gives the West Crawford Street address, the 98-bed capacity and the 1989 build year.
- Roster: the sheriff's Corrections page links an Inmate Inquiry hosted on the City of Findlay's domain. The page we opened is headed 'Hancock County Inmate Search' and filters on the Hancock County Justice Center, so it is counted as the county's roster even though the host is the city's.
- Fees: the sheriff's 'How to Deposit Funds' and video-visitation documents say convenience fees are set by TouchPay and off-site visit costs by Securus, but publish no amounts - so fees is 'no'.
- Budget: the county's own site (co.hancock.oh.us) could not be opened at all - robots.txt fetch timed out or failed on every attempt, including the Commissioners page - so no county budget document was seen.
- 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 pages.
- No jail administrator distinct from the sheriff is named on the pages opened.
- The county seat is not recorded from a page we opened, so seat_source is empty.
- 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 Hancock 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