Highland County, Ohio — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Highland County Justice Center

Operated byHighland County Sheriff's Office (Corrections Division)
Sheriff's Office address130 Homestead Avenue, Hillsboro, OH 45133 (from the state sheriffs' association directory, not confirmed on a county page)
Rated capacityNot found
Daily population42 on the day we looked, per the Miami Valley Jails portal the sheriff links as its inmate search
Jail AdministratorLieutenant Keith Brown — Corrections Division commander, Highland County Justice Center

Source: Highland County Sheriff's Office - Corrections · checked 2026-09-20

Transparency rating

2/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✓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 — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Highland County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-20. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

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 Randy Sanders

Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's Corrections Division operates the Highland County Justice Center
How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
Took officeElected sheriff of Highland County in June 2025

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Highland County Sheriff's Office - Sheriff · 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.

Highland County Circuit Court

Highland County Common Pleas Court
Highland County County Court
Highland County Juvenile Court
Highland County Probate Court
Hillsboro Municipal Court

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: Terry Britton (President), David Daniels (Vice President) and Brad Roades. Agendas and minutes are posted back to 2022.
The boardHighland County Board of Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

The sheriff's Corrections page names the Highland County Justice Center and names Lieutenant Keith Brown as the division's commander, but publishes no address, bed count or year built.
Roster: the sheriff links Miami Valley Jails as its inmate search. That portal is run by the Board of County Commissioners of Montgomery County, Ohio and covers several counties, but it lists the Highland County Jail by name, so it is counted as the county's linked roster.
Capacity is scored 'no': the only population figure we saw (42 people) is on the Montgomery County-run portal, not on Highland County's or its sheriff's own site, and no rated capacity is published anywhere we opened.
Fees: the commissary page names Access as the provider and the visitation page says off-site visit cost 'will vary by facility' and is set by ICSolutions - no amounts are published, so fees is 'no'.
The county's own site (co.highland.oh.us) opened normally but carries no budget or financial report page and no sheriff or jail material; its Government page links straight out to highlandcoso.com.
No bond or bail guidance, no PREA material, no deaths-in-custody material, no county-posted inspection report and no jail contracts were 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 Highland 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