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

The Detention Center

Ottawa County Detention Facility (with a minimum security jail)

Operated byOttawa County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
Jail address315 Madison Street, Room 110, Port Clinton, OH 43452 (state inspection report)
Rated capacitySheriff publishes 41 beds at the full-service detention facility and 48 dormitory beds at the minimum security jail; the 2025 state report gives a rated capacity of 39 beds
MailSince 27 May 2024 physical mail is scanned by ICSolutions and read on video terminals; mail goes to PO Box 247, Phoenix, MD 21131
BookingInmates may bring in $100 cash at initial booking
PREA reportingFamily and friends are told to report a PREA violation to the RAINN hotline, 1-800-656-4673

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

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓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
✗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 Ottawa 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
Beds41 beds (full-service detention facility) and 48 dormitory beds (minimum security jail) per the sheriff; 39 beds rated capacity per the 2025 state inspection report

Since then

The county's 2023 annual report records replacement of jail door controls with a $50,000 grant, a courthouse/jail cooling tower replacement at $259,650, and a full-service jail roof coating estimated at $40,000

The Sheriff

Sheriff Stephen J. Levorchick

Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's Corrections Division runs the Ottawa County Detention Facility and a minimum security jail
How the office is filledElected, four-year term
Office address315 Madison St., Port Clinton, OH 43452

Still needed

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

Source: Ottawa 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.

Ottawa 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 (Mark W. Stahl, president; Donald A. Douglas; Mark E. Coppeler).
The boardOttawa County Board of County Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Sheriff Stephen J. Levorchick is named on his own site, matching the state association directory (which lists him as Steve Levorchick).
The sheriff's corrections page publishes bed counts for both facilities and PREA reporting instructions.
The roster is published as a JailTracker link for Ottawa_County_OH from the sheriff's own pages; the JailTracker page itself did not render for our reader (it returned 'Roster' and a loading error), so the county's publication of it is recorded from the sheriff's page rather than scored from the roster's contents.
The sheriff's bed figures differ from the state's 2025 rated capacity of 39; both are recorded as published.
Budget is 'no': the county posts annual reports, and the 2023 one lists jail capital projects with costs, but no county budget or appropriations document with a sheriff or corrections line was reachable. The 2025 annual report PDF was too large for our reader to open.
No bond guidance, fee rates, contract or death-in-custody record was found on the sheriff's or county's sites, and the county does not post its own copy of the state inspection report.
http://www.ottawacountysheriff.org redirects to ottawacountysheriff.info, the live sheriff's site.
State inspection/oversight: Ohio's Bureau of Adult Detention inspected the Ottawa County Detention Facility on 1 October 2025 under the Minimum Standards for Jails in Ohio (Ohio Adm. Code 5120:1-8); the report, published on the state's site, says the facility 'is in compliance with 100% of the Essential Standards and at least 90% of the Important Standards meeting the requirements of a "Compliant Jail".'

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Ottawa 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