The Detention Center
Preble County Jail
- Operated byPreble County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address1139 Preble Drive, Eaton, OH 45320
- Rated capacity70 beds (state inspection report, 2024)
- Population on inspection day38 (13 November 2024)
- Source caveatThese facts come from the state's inspection report, not from a Preble County page — no Preble County jail page could be opened.
Source: ODRC Bureau of Adult Detention — 2024 Preble County Jail annual inspection report · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds70 (rated capacity in the state's 2024 inspection report)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Michael L. Simpson
- Runs the jailYes — Ohio Rev. Code 341.01 puts the sheriff in charge of the county jail. No regional jail arrangement was found for Preble County.
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
- CorroborationThe state's 2024 jail inspection report for the Preble County Jail names Sheriff Michael Simpson.
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association directory (not a county page; unconfirmed) · 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.
Preble 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.
- NoteOhio Rev. Code 305.01 gives Preble County a three-member Board of County Commissioners. The county's own commissioners page could not be opened, so no members or minutes URL are recorded.
- The boardPreble County Board of Commissioners
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- The ten checks are left empty, not answered 'no', because no page on a Preble County or Preble County Sheriff domain could be opened at all. Ten 'no's would be a false finding.
- What was tried and refused: https://www.preblecountysheriff.org/ , https://www.preblecountysheriff.org/200/Jail-Information , https://www.prebco.org/ , https://prebco.org/200/Jail-Information , https://www.prebco.org/257/Sheriffs-Office , https://www.prebco.org/368/County-Officials , https://www.preblecountyohio.gov — every one failed at the robots.txt step (connection timeouts). Those sites were never reached, so nothing about what they publish is claimed here either way.
- The one Preble County domain that did open is the county auditor's own site, preblecountyauditor.org. It confirms the county seat is Eaton (101 East Main Street, Eaton, Ohio 45320) and publishes monthly county financial reports for 2024–2026 and annual reports back to 2003.
- We opened the July 2026 monthly financial report PDF; it is a scan with no machine-readable text, so we could not read a sheriff or jail line out of it and did not score a budget check.
- Jail facts here come from the state's 2024 Bureau of Adult Detention inspection report: Preble County Jail, 1139 Preble Drive, Eaton; rated capacity 70; 38 people in custody on the 13 November 2024 inspection date. The report's own summary says the jail 'was found to be in compliance with the onsite jail inspection for the 2024 calendar year'.
- Sheriff's name is the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association entry, unconfirmed on any county page; the state inspection report independently names Sheriff Michael Simpson.
- State inspection/oversight: Ohio's Bureau of Adult Detention inspected the Preble County Jail in 2024 under the Minimum Standards for Jails in Ohio (Ohio Adm. Code 5120:1-8); the report, dated 23 December 2024 from a 13 November 2024 onsite inspection, is published on the state's site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Preble 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