The Detention Center
St. Clair County Jail
- Operated bySt. Clair County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address100 18th St. North, Pell City, AL 35125
- Other sheriff locationSheriff's home page also lists an Ashville office at 48 6th Street, Suite 300, Ashville, AL 35953; the corrections page describes one jail (Pell City)
- Phone servicePage says the jail contracts with Combined Public Communications (CPC) for inmate phones
- Jail AdministratorCaptain Phillip Barnard
Source: St. Clair County Sheriff — Corrections · checked 2026-09-29
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗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
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Billy J. Murray
- Runs the jailYes — by law the sheriff has legal custody and charge of the county jail (Ala. Code § 14-6-1)
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term; seat on the 3 Nov 2026 ballot
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: St. Clair County Sheriff — Corrections · 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 St. Clair County
- Circuit Court: Alabama's Thirtieth Judicial Circuit, which serves St. Clair County alone. Circuit judges are elected circuit-wide to six-year terms and try felony cases.
- District Court: the St. Clair 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.
- NoteCounty Commission site not located (search budget spent); agendas/minutes not opened.
- The boardSt. Clair County Commission
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- Sheriff's own site stclairsheriff.org (Alabama) opened: home page and corrections page.
- Corrections page names the St. Clair County Jail in Pell City and its administrator, Captain Phillip Barnard.
- Bond guidance published: property, surety and cash bonds accepted; bonds made at the Sheriff's Office in Ashville or Pell City; $35 cash fee to the Circuit Clerk.
- Commissary delivered Fridays and phones run by CPC, but no fee rates published on pages that opened.
- Site links an 'Inmate Roster' (stclairsheriff.org/inmate-roster) but our reader was refused it, so the roster could not be confirmed — scored no for that reason, not because none exists.
- inmates.stclaircounty.org is St. Clair County, MICHIGAN — not used.
- No capacity, PREA, deaths-in-custody, inspection report, contracts or budget found on pages that opened.
- What was tried: guessed domains (stclaircountysheriff.com, stclaircountyal.gov) refused; meet-the-sheriff, command-staff, faqs, public-information and roster pages refused by our reader.
- 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 St. Clair 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