The Detention Center
Richland County Jail
- Operated byRichland County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address73 East 2nd Street, Mansfield, OH 44902-2005
- Rated capacity266 beds
- Opened2008
- Phone419-774-5678
- Medical providerSouthern Health Partners, contracted for inmate health care
- Food providerSummit Food Service, LLC, serving inmate meals three times a day
- Phone providerIC Solutions
- DepositsKiosks in the visitation lobby or accesscorrections.com, 7:00 AM–9:00 PM Monday–Friday
Source: Richland County, Ohio — Jail · 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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built2008
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds266
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff J. Steve Sheldon
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's Corrections department runs the Richland County Jail at 73 East 2nd Street, Mansfield.
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ohio Rev. Code 311.01)
- Office address597 Park Ave. East, Mansfield, OH 44905-2848
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Richland County, Ohio — Sheriff's Office staff directory · 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.
Richland 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: Darrell Banks, Cliff Mears and Tony Vero, each with a page on the county site. No agenda or minutes archive URL was found on the county site.
- The boardRichland County Board of Commissioners
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- Richland County publishes a full jail section on its own domain: Jail, Who's in Jail, Inmate Visitation, Inmate Telephone Services, Medical, Food Services, Security, Jail Goals and PREA. Every one of those pages was opened.
- The jail page names the Richland County Jail, gives its address, and publishes both a rated capacity of 266 beds and the 2008 opening year.
- The county's Who's in Jail page says 'Search current inmate records for the Richland County Jail' and carries the search itself (correctionsrecordssearch.com/richlandcountyoh). The county page is the roster's home, so 'roster' is a yes on the county domain.
- The PREA page publishes the jail's zero-tolerance policy — 'The Richland County Jail will comply with standards to prevent, detect and respond to sexual abuse in its facility' — and gives a PREA hotline (419-774-3300) plus staff, anonymous and third-party reporting routes. No PREA audit report is posted.
- BUDGET — not verified, recorded as a no: the county auditor's financial page lists a 2024 CAFR, a 2026 General Fund Expense Report and a 2026 General Fund Comparison Report, but every document under the site's /media/ path is refused to our reader by robots.txt, so we could not see whether a sheriff or jail line appears in them. A human with a browser should check https://www.richlandcountyoh.gov/departments/auditor/financial .
- CONTRACTS — recorded as a no, but note the county does name its providers: Southern Health Partners for inmate medical care, Summit Food Service LLC for meals, IC Solutions for phones. No contract document, term or dollar figure is published, which is why this is not scored a yes.
- FEES — recorded as a no: the Inmate Telephone Services page names IC Solutions and tells people to ask the vendor about rates rather than publishing any. No commissary, video-visit or booking fee schedule appears on the county site.
- No death-in-custody record or policy, and no county copy of a state jail inspection report, was found anywhere in the jail section.
- Sheriff's name confirmed on the county's own staff directory as J. Steve Sheldon, matching the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association directory. The association's start URL, richlandcountyoh.us/Sheriff/Sheriff.html, 404s; richlandcountyoh.us redirects to richlandcountyoh.gov, which is the live site.
- 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 Richland 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