Crisp County, Georgia — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Crisp County Jail

Operated byCrisp County Sheriff's Office
Jail address196 GA Hwy 300 South, Cordele, GA 31015
Rated capacity224 beds
Built1991
FeaturesFour isolation cells, intoxication tank, suicide watch, medical services
Inmate housing revenue$58,466 returned to the County Commission for inmate housing (August 2024 monthly report)
Phone/video providerPay Tel; rates not published
Jail AdministratorFirst Lieutenant Corey Kennedy, Jail Administrator

Source: Crisp County Sheriff's Office — Detention Center Leadership · checked 2026-09-29

Transparency rating

2/10Closed

✓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 — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Crisp County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-29. 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 built1991
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds224

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff H.W. "Billy" Hancock

Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office runs the Crisp County Jail (detention center)
How the office is filledElected, four-year term; first appointed to fill a vacancy, now in his third term per his own page

Still needed

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

Source: Crisp County Sheriff's Office — Meet the Sheriff · checked 2026-09-29

The Judges

Georgia's superior court judges are elected state judges who hear felony cases. For most charges a county magistrate sets bail soon after arrest; for the most serious felonies only a superior court judge can.

Who sets bail in Crisp County

Superior Court: the Cordele Judicial Circuit, which also serves Dooly, Wilcox and Ben Hill. Superior court judges are elected circuit-wide in nonpartisan elections to four-year terms and hear felony cases; for the most serious felonies only a superior court judge can set bail.
Magistrate Court: the Crisp County Magistrate Court. For most charges a magistrate sets bail soon after arrest.

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 2026-09-29

The Board of Commissioners

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. Some small counties have a sole commissioner; consolidated governments such as Athens-Clarke, Augusta-Richmond, Columbus and Macon-Bibb have a commission instead.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations. By law the sheriff is the jailer of the county and appoints the other jailers, subject to the governing authority's supervision (O.C.G.A. 42-4-1). No state agency inspects the jail.
NoteMeets second Tuesday monthly, 9:00 a.m., Room 305, Crisp County Government Center, Cordele
The boardCrisp County Board of Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Sheriff's own site names H.W. "Billy" Hancock as sheriff; matches the directory lead.
Jail pages cover booking, mail, Pay Tel phone/video visitation, visitation times, money deposits (kiosk and commissarydeposit.com); no fee rates published.
No inmate roster/in-custody search found on the sheriff's site pages opened.
Monthly reports (Sept 2023-Aug 2024 visible) give bookings, releases, jail incidents, assaults, use-of-force counts and inmate housing money returned to the County Commission; no daily population figure.
General information page mentions bail being set at booking but gives no guidance on how to post bond.
No PREA, deaths-in-custody, inspection or contract material found on the sheriff's pages opened.
County site (crispcounty.com, found by one search) opened: Board of Commissioners page places county offices in Cordele; the Finance page links no budget document, so budget scored no.
Agendas/minutes URL taken from the board page; not opened.
State inspection/oversight: Georgia law makes the sheriff the county's jailer. The Georgia Sheriffs' Association, an association of the state's sheriffs rather than a state agency, publishes jail standards and a statewide monthly jail report.

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

Names verified 2026-09-29 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered