The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byPutnam County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address1035 Heritage Trail, Ottawa, OH 45875
- Current facilityCommissioned December 2002; inmates moved from the previous jail in February 2003
- Previous jailBuilt in 1890
- Building size33,000 sq. ft.
- Rated capacityNot found
- Why no nameThe sheriff's site calls it 'the current facility' and 'the previous jail' and never gives the jail a published name.
Source: Putnam County Sheriff's Office — About · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
0/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗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 — not published
- ✗How to post bond — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtCurrent facility commissioned December 2002; occupied February 2003. The jail it replaced was built in 1890.
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Brian Siefker
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's office runs the county's jail at 1035 Heritage Trail, Ottawa. No regional jail arrangement was found for Putnam County.
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
- Office phone419.523.3208
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Putnam 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.
Putnam 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: Tim Wehri, John Schlumbohm and Brad Brubaker; 245 E. Main St, Suite 101, Ottawa. Meeting minutes are published as PDFs from 2019 to date.
- The boardPutnam County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Both the sheriff's own site (sheriffoff.com) and the county site (putnamcountyohio.gov) opened, and every sheriff's-site section was read: About, History, Resources, Services, Inmate Visitation, Careers, Contact.
- The sheriff's About page gives the jail's building history — commissioned December 2002, 33,000 sq. ft., replacing an 1890 jail in February 2003 — but the jail is never given a name, so 'named' is a no.
- The only jail page on the sheriff's site is Inmate Visitation, which sets out visitor rules and hours (two visitors and twenty minutes each Sunday and again on Wednesday). It publishes no roster, capacity, bond guidance, commissary rates or PREA material.
- The offender-search links on the sheriff's site go to the state's own offender search and to VINELink — neither is a Putnam County in-custody roster, so 'roster' is a no.
- JailATM is listed among the sheriff's resource links as the deposit vendor, but no rates are published, so 'fees' is a no.
- The county's commissioners publish meeting minutes back to 2019 but no budget or appropriations document. The county auditor's site at co.putnam.oh.us could not be opened (robots.txt connection timeout).
- Sheriff's name confirmed on the sheriff's own site as Brian Siefker; the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association directory gives Brian S. Siefker.
- 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 Putnam 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