The Detention Center
Wayne County Jail
- Operated byWayne County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- Jail address201 W. North Street, Wooster, OH 44691
- CapacityHouses 120 inmates, per the sheriff's About page
- Justice Center built1977
- StaffingA captain, one lieutenant, four sergeants, corrections officers, deputies, three nurses, three mental health workers, two cooks and a jail chaplain
- Jail AdministratorCaptain Earl Kelly — Jail Administrator, Corrections Division
Source: Wayne County Sheriff — Jail · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓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 built1977 (Wayne County Justice Center)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds120 inmates
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Thomas Ballinger
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's Corrections Division operates the Wayne County Jail
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Wayne County Sheriff's Office · 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.
Wayne 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.
- NoteCommissioners listed as Matt Martin, Jonathan Hofstetter and Dave McMillen; regular sessions Wednesdays at 9 a.m. The county also runs a Community Corrections Board under Ohio Rev. Code 5149.34, which publishes its own agendas.
- The boardWayne County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The sheriff's own domain, waynecountysheriff.com, names the jail, gives its address and states it houses 120 inmates; the Justice Center it sits in was built in 1977.
- Captain Earl Kelly is named as jail administrator on the Corrections Division page, distinct from the sheriff.
- The jail page points to vendors for deposits, phone and commissary (JailATM, ICSolutions, Access Corrections) and to the Wayne County courts' public access search, but publishes no in-custody roster of its own and no rates, so roster and fees are 'no'.
- No PREA material, inspection copy, deaths record, jail contract or bond guidance was found on the sheriff's pages that opened.
- The county government site wayneohio.org confirms Wooster as the county seat and publishes commissioners' agendas and resolutions; a Wayne County Community Corrections Board also posts meeting agendas there, but no jail budget line was located.
- 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 Wayne 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