The Detention Center
Knox County Jail
- Operated byKnox County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address11540 Upper Gilchrist Road, Mount Vernon, Ohio 43050
- Rated capacity100 beds
- Opened2002, replacing 'the ninety year old Chestnut Street Jail, which has been torn down for parking at the court house'
- Average daily population82 in 2023 (85 in 2017, 82 in 2018, 88 in 2019, 73 in 2020, 68 in 2021, 69 in 2022)
- Federal housing contract'The Knox County Sheriff's Office also has a contract with the U.S. Marshal's Service for housing federally charged inmates.'
- Inmate processing fee$20.00
- Medical charges$5.00 co-pay assessments and $10.00 physician visits; $0.10 per pill pharmacy fee
- Jail AdministratorJames Crawford — Jail Administrator, listed on the Jail Division page
Source: Knox County Sheriff's Office — Jail Division · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
5/10Partial- ✓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
- ✗How to post bond — not published
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built2002
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds100
Since then
- Replaced the ninety-year-old Chestnut Street Jail, since demolished for courthouse parking
The Sheriff
Sheriff Daniel J. Weckesser
- Runs the jailYes — the Knox County Jail on Upper Gilchrist Road
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- Background'elected as Knox County Sheriff in 2025'; formerly 21 years with the Danville police department, 7 as police chief
- Office address11540 Upper Gilchrist Rd., Mount Vernon, OH 43050
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Knox County Sheriff's Office — About · 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.
Knox 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.
- NoteThree-member board at 117 East High Street, Mount Vernon. Members listed: Drenda Keesee, Barry Lester, Bill Pursel. Agendas and minutes are hosted on a Legistar portal linked from the board page.
- The boardKnox County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The BSSA URL knoxcountysheriff.com redirects to co.knox.oh.us/sheriff — the sheriff's office sits on the county's own domain.
- Roster: the sheriff publishes a PDF inmate list on the county domain, headed 'Website Inmate Info Printed on September 20, 2026', with 79 records showing arrest dates, hold reasons and charges.
- Contracts and fees both come from the sheriff's 2023 Annual Report on the county domain: a U.S. Marshals Service housing contract, a $20.00 inmate processing fee and medical co-pays.
- A commissary price list is posted at co.knox.oh.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/commissary-prices.pdf but returned no machine-readable text to our reader, so it was not used to score.
- No county jail budget line, deaths-in-custody record, PREA material, county-posted inspection report or bond-posting guidance found. The annual report gives population and fees but no budget figures.
- Phone and web checks credited to the office.
- 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 Knox 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