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

The Detention Center

John E. Polk Correctional Facility

Operated bySeminole County Sheriff's Office (Department of Corrections)
Jail address211 Eslinger Way, Sanford, FL 32773 (visitation page); sheriff's office is at 100 Eslinger Way
Design capacity1,396 inmates
BookingsOver 20,000 a year
Who is heldPre-trial felony and misdemeanor, sentenced misdemeanor, felons awaiting transfer to state prison, and federal inmates awaiting trial in U.S. courts

Source: Seminole County Sheriff's Office — John E. Polk Correctional Facility · checked 2026-09-28

Transparency rating

3/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✓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
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Seminole County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-28. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds1,396 design capacity

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Dennis Lemma

Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Department of Corrections runs the John E. Polk Correctional Facility
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: Seminole County Sheriff's Office — home 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 Seminole County

Circuit Court: Florida's Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, which also serves Brevard (Fla. Stat. 26.021). Circuit judges are elected circuit-wide to six-year terms and hear felonies.
County Court: the Seminole 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.
NoteCounty government page (seminolecountyfl.gov) was blocked by robots.txt; agenda/minutes URL not recorded.
The boardSeminole County Board of County Commissioners
Where the jail money is decidedNot found

Notes on the record

Sheriff's site confirmed at seminolesheriff.org (Seminole County, Florida); home page names Sheriff Dennis Lemma.
The sheriff's Department of Corrections runs the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Sanford, design capacity 1,396; it also holds federal pre-trial inmates.
Bond page explains cash (no personal checks), surety through registered agents, and card payments up to $2,500 per transaction online, by phone or at the intake/release window.
Roster: the sheriff's WebBond custody portal exists, but every attempt to open it failed on the fetcher's robots.txt check, so roster is not scored yes. Our reader also lost the sheriff site's links, so other checks may be under-counted.
No fee amounts, PREA material, budget, deaths-in-custody data, inspection report or contracts were found on the pages that opened.
What was tried: seminolecountyfl.gov (robots), webbond.seminolesheriff.org, /webbond/ root, /webbond/Default.aspx and the inmate rules PDF (robots failures); two searches used.
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 Seminole 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