The Detention Center
Monroe County Sheriff's Office detention facilities (Stock Island, Marathon, Plantation Key)
- Operated byMonroe County Sheriff's Office
- Main facility"State of the art detention facilities located in Stock Island" (sheriff's About page)
- Other facilitiesMarathon and Plantation Key
- Rated capacityNot found
Source: Monroe County Sheriff's Office — About · checked 2026-09-28
Transparency rating
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 Rick Ramsay
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's own site says the office "operates safe and professional detention and court security services throughout the Keys"
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- Detention sites namedStock Island, Marathon and Plantation Key
- Corrections officers120 of 530 total personnel (sheriff's About page)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Monroe County Sheriff's Office — home page and About Sheriff Ramsay page · 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 Monroe County
- Circuit Court: Florida's Sixteenth Judicial Circuit, which serves Monroe County alone (Fla. Stat. 26.021). Circuit judges are elected circuit-wide to six-year terms and hear felonies.
- County Court: the Monroe County Court. County judges are elected countywide to six-year terms and hear misdemeanors.
- 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.
- NoteCounty government site (monroecounty-fl.gov) could not be opened; minutes URL not recorded.
- The boardMonroe County Board of County Commissioners
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- Sheriff's site keysso.net opened (home, About, Sheriff, Inmate Guidelines, Visitation, Locations, Annual Report 2025, Financial Statements, General Orders, Accreditation, History) and confirmed as Monroe County, Florida.
- Every sub-page body loads by script; our reader saw only menus and footers, not page content. Checks were therefore NOT scored rather than recorded as ten false 'no's.
- Links exist on the sheriff's site for Current Inmates (/jailog), Inmate Visitation, Phones & Accounts (/jailVisit), Inmate Guidelines (/jailRules), Unclaimed Bonds (/uBonds), Financial Statements and Budgets (/financial-statements), Annual Report 2025 and searchable General Orders and Corrections Directives — contents unverified.
- Sheriff's site calls the office 'a state and nationally accredited law enforcement agency'; no inspection report was seen.
- What was tried: http(s)://www.keysso.net and keysso.net (refused at first, opened after search); /jailog and node.keysso.net/jailog (robots.txt refused); www.monroecounty-fl.gov root and /922 page (refused — county government site closed to us).
- Sheriff name: home page identifies Rick Ramsay as Sheriff; FDLE lead lists Richard Ramsay (same person, short form).
- 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 Monroe 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