The Detention Center
Warren County Jail
- Operated byWarren County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address822 Memorial Drive, Lebanon, OH 45036 (GPS address 550 Justice Drive)
- Daily populationApproximately 300 prisoners daily, per the sheriff's office page
- Booking phone513-695-1287, per the county court's bond page
Source: Warren County Sheriff's Office · 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 — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found (about 300 held daily, per the sheriff's office page)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Barry Riley
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's office operates the Warren County Jail at 822 Memorial Drive, Lebanon
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- Name not confirmedThe live sheriff site sheriff.warrencountyohio.gov refused its root page; the older wcsooh.org page still names a former sheriff
- 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.
Warren County Circuit Court
- Warren County Court
- 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.
- NoteBoard meets in general session every Tuesday at 9:00 am, with work sessions on set Tuesdays and Thursdays; sessions are streamed on the board's YouTube channel.
- The boardWarren County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Warren County runs two live sheriff domains. The BSSA-listed wcsooh.org answers and describes an accredited Warren County Jail holding about 300 prisoners daily, but it names Larry L. Sims as sheriff, which disagrees with the state association's current listing of Barry Riley; that page appears out of date, so the sheriff's name is recorded from the BSSA as unconfirmed rather than risk naming a sheriff who has left office.
- The current sheriff site, sheriff.warrencountyohio.gov, refused its root page with a 403; its jail information page opened and links the county's inmate search at warren.miamivalleyjails.org plus vendor pages for commissary, phone and video visits. No rates are published, so fees is 'no'.
- The county court's posting-bond page is clear first-party bond guidance: cash, surety and own-recognizance bonds, a mandatory $25 state fee, refund process and forfeiture hearing. It also names the Warren County Jail booking line.
- No jail capacity document, budget line, PREA material, inspection copy, deaths record or jail contract was found on any Warren County page that opened.
- Several county pages (sheriff root, auditor annual statement PDF, jail visitation) returned 403 and could not be judged.
- 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 Warren 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