Columbiana County Jail Inmate Search

Columbiana County Jail, located in Lisbon Ohio, was originally built in 1817. Originally designed to hold only 20 inmates when originally constructed, the current jail, which was built in 1950, is now designed to hold 10 times more than its 1817 predecessor. It currently spans roughly 15,000 square feet.

Columbiana County Jail has been privately operated since 1998. The first private contractor hired to operate the jail was CiviGenics Inc., which operated the jail for 12 years. In 2010, CiviGenics Inc. was sold to Community Education Center (CEC), who operated it for a few years before being acquired by the GEO Group. The GEO Group, which owns and operates 141 prisons in the United States, now operates the Columbiana County Jail.

In August of 2008, four inmates escaped from the jail. Wrapping clothes inside bed sheets, the four inmates placed the wrapped bundles underneath the covers to mimic the form of a person sleeping. The inmates then crawled through the air duct to the roof, where they jumped from the roof to the ground at the front of the building. They successfully ran 123 miles before being caught in Bellevue.

The four inmates were Jason Heffner, William Merritt, Mark Foden, and John Hamilton. They were found in a stolen black SUV, in a small suburb of Bellevue. Jason Heffner's girlfriend, Melissa McCulley, was also arrested in conjunction with their escape.

The Columbiana County Jail has faced additional issues. Inmates have regularly flushed foreign items down the toilets, such as bed sheets, clothes, and hard plastic items, with the intent of flooding out the cell. Drugs, weapons, and other contraband are regularly smuggled into the jail, partially because body cavity searches are not allowed.

In May 2018, an inspection performed by the Columbiana Sheriff's Department found 8 cells unlocked so inmates could roam at will throughout the prison. Inmates had stuffed socks into the door jamb, caused the locking mechanism to jamb and the cell door to open freely.

It is alleged that the issues stem from low pay for corrections officers, high turnover, overcrowding, and more radical inmate behavior. According to the county prosecutor, Robert Herron, inmates have become more violent and unruly: "They have no respect for anything and are much more violent … You have someone who doesn't give a damn about themselves or anyone else. They type of inmates we deal with today are different then the inmates we dealt with 15-20 years ago."