Highlands County, Florida — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Highlands County Jail

Operated byHighlands County Sheriff's Office
Sheriff's office address434 Fernleaf Ave., Sebring, FL 33870; phone 863-402-7200
Rated capacityNot found

Source: Highlands County Sheriff's Office (highlandssheriff.org) · checked 2026-09-28

Transparency rating

Not scored. Highlands County's and its sheriff's own websites could not be reached or read in the session that produced this record, so their disclosures were never examined. This is a gap in the research, not a finding about the county.

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 Paul Blackman

CurrentNamed in the FDLE Sheriff's Office Directory, 2 Sep 2025; not confirmed on a county page
Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's site presents the Highlands County Jail as part of the Highlands County Sheriff's Office
How the office is filledElected, four-year term

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: FDLE Sheriff's Office Directory (2 Sep 2025) · checked 2026-09-28

The Judges

Florida's circuit and county judges are elected state judicial officers, not county officials. A judge sets the first conditions of release at first appearance, within 24 hours of arrest.

Who sets bail in Highlands County

Circuit Court: Florida's Tenth Judicial Circuit, which also serves Hardee and Polk (Fla. Stat. 26.021). Circuit judges are elected circuit-wide to six-year terms and hear felonies.
County Court: the Highlands County Court. County judges are elected countywide to six-year terms and hear misdemeanors.

Still needed

The county's bond schedule
Share of the jail population held pretrial
Median time from booking to first appearance

Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-28

The Board of County Commissioners

They pay for the jail. In most counties the sheriff runs it; in some, the county does.

What they controlThe sheriff's budget, including its separate line for corrections and detention: the sheriff submits it by June 1 and the board may amend, increase or reduce it (Fla. Stat. 30.49). The board also owns the jail building, and it decides by ordinance whether the sheriff or a county corrections department runs the jail (Fla. Stat. 951.061).
What they don'tDay-to-day operations where the sheriff runs the jail. The sheriff is separately elected, and can appeal the board's budget cuts to the Governor and Cabinet sitting as the Administration Commission. No state agency inspects the jail; peer inspectors from other sheriffs' offices do.
NoteNo county government page could be opened in this session.
The boardHighlands County Board of County Commissioners
Where the jail money is decidedNot found

Notes on the record

The sheriff's current site is highlandssheriff.gov (confirmed Highlands County, Florida), but only its home page opened and it showed no sheriff name or links to our reader. Its Jail Information, Inmate Search and Contact pages were refused by robots.txt.
The older domain highlandssheriff.org (from the prompt's lead) opened: it refers to the 'Highlands County Jail', gives 434 Fernleaf Ave., Sebring, and mentions a jail inmate search and 'Accreditation Reports', but our reader could not extract the link URLs, so none of those could be opened. It carries no date and may be a legacy site.
Because the jail sub-pages were refused, every check except 'named' is recorded 'no' without the sub-pages having been seen — treat them as not examined, not as confirmed absences.
No opened own page named the sheriff; Paul Blackman is the FDLE fallback. County seat Sebring is taken from the sheriff's address.
What was tried: https://www.highlandssheriff.gov/jailInfo, /inmateSearch and /contactUs (ROBOTS_DISALLOWED). 1 WebSearch used.
Not scored: Only a linkless home page and a legacy page opened; jail info, inmate search and contact pages were refused by robots. Marking the rest 'not published' would claim more than was checked. Found published on the pages that did open: named.
State inspection/oversight: Florida requires every county jail to meet the Florida Model Jail Standards and to be inspected each year, but the inspectors come from other sheriffs' offices, not a state agency, and state law does not require the reports to be published.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Highlands 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. So are the county commissioners who pay for the jail, and the judges who set bail.

Names verified 2026-09-28 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered