The Detention Center
Van Wert County Correctional Facility
- Operated byVan Wert County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- Jail address204 North Washington Street, Van Wert, OH 45891
- Rated capacity82 beds, described as a county-owned building
- OpenedSeptember 1998
- ProgramsAnger management, parenting skills, drug and alcohol rehabilitation; religious services
Source: Van Wert County Sheriff — Corrections Division · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓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 — 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 builtSeptember 1998
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byDescribed on the county site as a county-owned building; no funding detail published
- Beds82
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Thomas M. Riggenbach
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's Corrections Division operates the Van Wert County Correctional Facility
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- Took officeJanuary 2, 2013, per the sheriff's own page
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Van Wert County Sheriff — Meet Your Sheriff · 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.
Van Wert 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; commissioners listed as Thad Lichtensteiger, Stan D. Owens and Todd D. Wolfrum on the county page.
- The boardBoard of Van Wert County Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The sheriff's office lives on the county's own domain, vanwertcountyohio.gov, so every page judged here is first-party.
- The Corrections Division page names the jail, gives the address, states an 82-bed county-owned building and a September 1998 opening.
- The sheriff's home page carries a 'Current Inmates and Active Warrants' link to the office's own mobile app (apps.myocv.com); scored as the county's roster on the strength of that county-page link, though the app itself was not opened.
- No commissary or phone rates, PREA material, inspection copies, deaths-in-custody records, jail contracts or bond guidance were found on the sheriff's pages that were opened.
- Commissioners' agendas are published by year on the county 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 Van Wert 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