The Detention Center
Muskingum County Jail
- Operated byMuskingum County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- Jail address1840 East Pike, Zanesville, OH 43701
- Management model'Strategic Inmate Management' — direct officer-inmate interaction and risk assessment
- New jail under construction1525 Pershing Road; construction began 8 May 2025, scheduled to finish August 2027
- New jail beds357 new beds, plus 27 intake holding beds and 22 special housing beds
- Offsite video visit$7.50 a call; onsite lobby video visits at no cost
- Jail AdministratorCaptain Joe Wilson — Jail Administrator, Muskingum County Jail
Source: Muskingum County Sheriff — 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
- ✗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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found for the current jail; the replacement jail at 1525 Pershing Road began construction 8 May 2025 and is scheduled to finish August 2027
- Original costNew jail estimated at $78.65 million (county auditor's 2025 Popular Annual Financial Report)
- Paid for byThe county issued $35 million in Capital Facilities Improvement General Obligation Bonds in 2024, plus $34 million in bond anticipation notes; $25.5 million of capital outlay was spent on construction in 2025
- BedsNew jail: 357 beds (58 two-bunk cells, 48 dorm-style cells), plus 27 intake holding beds and 14 male / 8 female special housing beds
Since then
- Replacement jail under construction at 1525 Pershing Road, Zanesville, from 8 May 2025
The Sheriff
Sheriff Matthew J. Lutz
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's Corrections Division runs the Muskingum County Jail
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- In office since2008 (sheriff's own site)
- Office address1840 East Pike, Zanesville, OH 43701
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Muskingum County Sheriff — Jail Division · 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.
Muskingum County Circuit Court
- Not found
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 of County Commissioners (Melissa Bell, president; Cindy S. Cameron; Drake Prouty); County Administrator Kade Haddox. Minutes posted back to 2020.
- The boardMuskingum County Board of County Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Sheriff Matthew J. Lutz is named on the sheriff's own site, matching the state association directory.
- Captain Joe Wilson is named as jail administrator on the sheriff's jail page, so he is recorded separately from the sheriff.
- The county auditor's 2025 Popular Annual Financial Report publishes a Public Safety expenditure line of $21,162,581, described as 'the costs of the Sheriff, Coroner, Building, and Emergency Management Agency Departments', which is why budget is 'yes'.
- Capacity is scored 'yes' on the same report's bed counts for the jail now under construction (357 beds). No rated capacity for the existing jail at 1840 East Pike was published anywhere we opened.
- Fees: the sheriff publishes '$7.50 a call' for offsite video visits and says onsite lobby visits are free.
- The roster runs on the sheriff's own subdomain (inmatesearch.corp1840.ohiomuskingumsheriff.org) as an in-custody inmate inquiry for the Muskingum County Jail.
- No PREA material, inspection report copy, contract or death-in-custody record was found on the sheriff's or county's sites.
- What was tried and refused: https://www.muskingumcounty.org (robots/connect timeout).
- The state's 2024 inspection report gives the jail's address as 28 N. 4th Street, Zanesville, and a rated capacity of 180 beds; the sheriff's site gives 1840 East Pike as the jail address. Both are recorded as published.
- State inspection/oversight: Ohio's Bureau of Adult Detention inspected the Muskingum County Jail on 5 November 2024 under the Minimum Standards for Jails in Ohio (Ohio Adm. Code 5120:1-8); the report, published on the state's site on 23 December 2024, says the jail 'is in compliance with 157 standards, 48 "Essential", and 109 "Important"' and 'did not comply with 20 standards, 5 "Essential", and 15 "Important".'
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Muskingum 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