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

The Detention Center

Medina County Jail

Operated byMedina County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
Jail address555 Independence Drive, Medina, OH 44256
Inmate information line330-764-3628
Self-commitThe division publishes self-commit guidelines for people reporting to serve a sentence

Source: Medina County Sheriff — Corrections Division · checked 2026-09-20

Transparency rating

2/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✓What it costs taxpayers
✗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 Medina 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 Terry Grice

Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's Corrections Division operates the Medina County Jail
How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
Office address555 Independence Drive, Medina, OH 44256

Still needed

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

Source: Medina 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.

Medina County Circuit Court

Medina County Common Pleas Court
Medina Municipal Court
Wadsworth 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: Colleen M. Swedyk (President), Stephen D. Hambley (Vice-President) and Aaron M. Harrison; agendas, minutes and resolutions are published.
The boardMedina County Board of Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

medinasheriff.com redirects to medinasheriff.org, the sheriff's own domain, which names the Medina County Jail and gives its address but publishes no bed capacity, year built or cost.
The county auditor's own domain publishes a Medina County year-to-date budget report with explicit corrections lines, including 'GF SHERIFF JAIL SAL' at about $5.64 million revised and 'GF SHERIFF JAIL MED' at $535,000, so the budget check is 'yes'.
The sheriff's inmate portal at portal-oh-medina-so.centralsquarecloud.com is linked from the Corrections Division page but is disallowed by robots and could not be opened, so the roster check stays 'no'.
The self-commit guidelines PDF opened and covers approved items, visitation and parking, but contains no fees, bond guidance or facility capacity.
No PREA material, deaths-in-custody record, inspection copy or contract was found on the sheriff's or the county's pages opened.
The county's 'County Financial Information' link from the commissioners' page returned a 404.
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 Medina 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