The Detention Center
Etowah County Detention Center
- Operated byEtowah County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address827 Forrest Avenue, Gadsden, AL 35901
- HousingTen housing units: minimum, medium, special management and maximum custody
- Accreditation claimedAmerican Correctional Association (Core Jail Standards); medical accredited by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care
- Medical providerDoctors' Care Physicians, P.C. (since 2005)
- Population on rosterRoster header showed 601 in custody when read 29 Sep 2026
- Jail AdministratorChief Barry Smith, Chief of Detention
Source: Etowah County Sheriff's Office — Detention · checked 2026-09-29
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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jonathon W. Horton
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff has legal custody of the jail by law (Ala. Code 14-6-1); the Sheriff's Office runs the Etowah County Detention Center
- 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: Etowah County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-09-29
The Judges
Alabama's circuit and district judges are elected state judges. A district judge or magistrate usually sets bail soon after arrest; felony cases are tried in circuit court.
Who sets bail in Etowah County
- Circuit Court: Alabama's Sixteenth Judicial Circuit, which serves Etowah County alone. Circuit judges are elected circuit-wide to six-year terms and try felony cases.
- District Court: the Etowah County District Court. District judges are elected countywide to six-year terms; a district judge or magistrate usually sets bail soon after arrest.
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-29
The County Commission
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe county budget that funds the sheriff's office and the jail, and the jail building itself.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. By law the sheriff has legal custody and charge of the jail and everyone held in it (Ala. Code 14-6-1). No state agency sets and enforces standards for the jail.
- NoteThe county home page names the Etowah County Commission and lists commission minutes (Oct-Dec 2025), but our reader could not extract the minutes' URLs.
- The boardEtowah County Commission →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Sheriff's own site (etowahcountysheriff.com) confirmed Etowah County, Alabama and names Sheriff Jonathon W. Horton.
- Command staff page names Chief Barry Smith as Chief of Detention.
- Detention page names the jail and its address, and says it holds ACA and NCCHC accreditation, but posts no audit or inspection report.
- Capacity scored on the live roster, whose header shows the number currently in custody (601 on 29 Sep 2026); no rated bed count is published.
- Detention, services, roster and site-map pages have no pages on bond, visitation, commissary, phone fees or PREA.
- County site etowahcounty.org opened (names Gadsden as county seat and the Etowah County Commission) but sub-pages /commission/ and /budget/ were refused by our reader, so the county budget could not be checked.
- What was tried: guessed domains etowahcountysheriff.org, etowahso.org, etowahcountyal.gov, etowahcountyal.org, www.etowahcounty.org and co.etowah.al.us were refused or do not exist; 1 search found the sheriff's site.
- State inspection/oversight: Alabama has no state agency that sets and enforces standards for county jails. The law that once gave a state agency jail-inspection duties was repealed in 2015.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Etowah 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 is elected — every Alabama sheriff's seat is on the November 2026 ballot. So are the commissioners who pay for the jail, and the judges who set bail.
Names verified 2026-09-29 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered