Locate Knox County Jail Inmates

Knox County Jail Overview

Knox County Jail is operated by the Knox County Sheriff's Office at 11540 Upper Gilchrist Road in Mount Vernon. It is the same facility used for the official PDF inmate list, jail records, video visitation, inmate accounts, incoming commitments, scanned mail, and local jail services. The research did not identify a separate city jail, jail annex, work-release building, state prison, federal BOP institution, or ICE detention center inside Knox County. Municipal agencies such as Mount Vernon Police may arrest people, but adult local custody is routed to the county jail.

The facility is a full-service county jail. Sheriff's annual reports describe its population as people awaiting trial on misdemeanor or felony charges, people sentenced on misdemeanor or certain felony charges, sentenced felony prisoners awaiting transport to prison, and U.S. Marshals inmates housed under contract. That last group is important. A federal pretrial defendant may physically appear in the Knox County Jail and on the local roster, but a person serving a federal sentence is searched through BOP, not the sheriff roster.

Knox County Jail Population

The 2025 ODRC annual jail inspection reported a recommended and actual general housing capacity of 100 at Knox County Jail. Inspectors counted 90 inmates at the facility on November 18, 2025. The sheriff's 2024 annual report listed an average daily jail population of 78 and 1,182 total prisoners housed or booked for the year. Those figures show the jail was under capacity on the cited dates, but the same 2025 inspection still listed five standards deficiencies.

Lookup Knox County Jail Inmates

The correct first lookup source for Knox County Jail is the official sheriff Jail Inmate List PDF. The roster reviewed during research was printed June 24, 2026 and showed 79 total records. It is a PDF report, not an interactive search portal. The report shows a front mugshot column, name, arrest date, hold reason, and charge lines. It does not show bond amount, booking number, court date, housing unit, warrant number, full date of birth, or projected release date in the visible text.

1. Open the current jail roster PDF from the Knox County Sheriff's Office.
2. Check the print date at the top of the report before relying on the list.
3. Use the PDF viewer's find tool for the last name.
4. Read the arrest date, hold reason, and charge lines together.
5. Call the jail at (740) 399-3940 if the person is missing, the PDF looks stale, or a bond or hold question is urgent.
6. Use ODRC, BOP, ICE, or VINELink when custody has moved beyond the local jail.

For a deeper field-by-field breakdown, the Knox County inmate records page explains what the roster shows and what it leaves out.

Knox County Jail Address

Use the jail contact line for current custody and facility questions. Use sheriff records when the need is a copy of a past booking record, incident report, or public record. The jail fax, medical fax, and records emails are separate channels, but the public phone numbers below are the main access points documented in the research.

Visit Knox County Jail

Knox County Jail uses video visitation. The jail page says visitors must use jailatm.com, choose Video Visitation or Onsite Visit, create an account with Securus, receive Knox County Jail approval, and schedule a visit online with a specific inmate. The scheduled inmate is the only inmate who may be visited during that time. Visiting someone else can suspend the account.

Visitor approval requires positive picture ID. The jail lists driver's license, state ID, government ID, and passport as examples. The photo must clearly identify the visitor. A photo with apparel that obscures appearance, including sunglasses or hats, is not accepted as positive picture ID.

Knox County Jail Mail Money

Knox County Jail uses mail scanning to reduce contraband. The sheriff's 2024 annual report says mail sent to inmates goes to a location where it is scanned and uploaded to an inmate account viewable in each dorm. The jail page says mail must include the full facility name and state where the facility is located, plus the inmate's unique identifier. The sender's full name and physical address must be written clearly in the top-left corner. Legal mail is accepted and must follow the legal-mail instructions.

Knox County Jail Fees

Knox County Jail publishes several fee and account rules through the jail page, annual reports, and incoming-commitment sheet. The jail page says money placed on an inmate account will be applied to jail fees if the inmate owes them. The incoming-commitment sheet also says money placed on an account can only be returned to the inmate or attorney at release, with a limit of two money-release transactions per stay.

Knox County Jail Booking

The incoming-commitments sheet says booking includes an inventory of every item an inmate brings into the jail. It asks incoming commitments to bring only allowed and necessary items because contraband affects staff and inmate safety. Current picture identification is required. The sheet says the jail no longer accepts prescription drugs of any kind, but medical staff will evaluate potential life-saving medication. Tobacco, outside food not purchased through commissary, matches, lighters, sparking devices, and unapproved items are not allowed.

Ohio jail standards require classification systems for custody level, housing, special needs, and programming. The 2025 ODRC inspection listed a classification-policy deficiency because the jail's documentation did not evidence all required components, specifically participation in programming. After booking, formal charge information should be checked through the proper court. Misdemeanor and traffic matters commonly appear in Mount Vernon Municipal Court, while felony matters move to Common Pleas if indicted, bound over, or otherwise filed there.

Knox County Jail Programs

The sheriff annual reports give more local program detail than many jail pages. TeamHealth became the jail healthcare provider in 2023 and continued to provide medical care in 2024. Freedom Center provides substance-use assessments, individual and group counseling, and support services in collaboration with the Knox County Sheriff's Office, Mount Vernon Municipal Court, and Knox County Common Pleas Court. Behavioral Health Partnership provided mental-health assessments and counseling, and the 2024 report described the hiring of Rachel Webster, MSW-LSW, as a full-time correctional social worker for substance-abuse, anxiety, depression, and other mental-health programming.

The 2024 sheriff report also gives a concrete operations detail: the jail prepared 83,090 meals that year, with an average food cost of $1.77, personnel cost of $1.75, and total average cost per meal of $3.51. Those figures do not change the custody lookup process, but they help explain the scale of daily jail operations tied to the Knox County Jail population.

Knox County Jail Standards

ODRC inspects full-service county jails under Ohio jail standards. The 2023 sheriff report said Knox County Jail received a 100 percent compliance rating that year. The 2025 inspection listed compliance with 170 standards, including 52 essential and 118 important standards, but it also identified five noncompliant standards. The deficiencies involved classification-system policy components, kitchen and culinary equipment inventory practice, maintenance and repair issues, fire drills exceeding the 90-day requirement or not documented on each shift, and grievance appeal content missing from the inmate rules of conduct handbook.