The Detention Center
DeKalb County Jail
- Operated byDeKalb County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address4425 Memorial Drive, Decatur, GA 30032 (Sheriff headquarters at 4415 Memorial Drive)
- Capacity3,800 beds
- Daily populationAbout 2,200 people daily; more than 40,000 detainees processed a year (as published)
- Phone and video visitsViaPath (from January 5, 2026); calls $0.10 per minute (legal calls free); video visits $0.19 per minute
- Bond fees$20 non-refundable fee on all bonds; property bond $20 per form plus $7.50 property affidavit fee
- FY2026 sheriff budget$104,325,152 (adopted February 26, 2026)
Source: DeKalb County Sheriff's Office — About Us / Bonding & Inmate Services · checked 2026-09-29
Transparency rating
8/10Open- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✓PREA audits
- ✓Independent inspection
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds3,800 (as published by the Sheriff's Office)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Melody M. Maddox
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office operates the DeKalb County Jail, described as the state's largest adult pre-trial detention facility
- In office sinceDecember 1, 2019 (the county's 50th sheriff, per the Sheriff's Office)
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Georgia law)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: DeKalb County Sheriff's Office — About Us · 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 DeKalb County
- Superior Court: the DeKalb Judicial Circuit, which serves DeKalb County alone. 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 DeKalb County Magistrate Court. For most charges a magistrate 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 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.
- NoteSeven commissioners (five districts, two super districts); meeting agendas on the county's Legistar calendar (dekalbcountyga.legistar.com), linked from the board page.
- The boardDeKalb County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Sheriff's site dekalbsheriff.org opened; DeKalb County, Georgia confirmed.
- About Us gives 3,800-bed capacity and about 2,200 people held daily; Bonding & Inmate Services gives jail address and how to post cash, professional and property bonds, with fees.
- Inmate Visitation page publishes rates: calls $0.10/minute, video visits $0.19/minute.
- Sheriff home page links 'Inmate Lookup' to correctionsrecordssearch.com/dekalbcountyga; the lookup opened but our reader could not render its contents.
- Services page posts annual PREA reports (2016-2024) and a PREA hotline.
- Accreditation Reports page posts ACA (2007, 2010, 2017), CALEA (2012, 2015, 2018) and NCCHC (2012, 2015, 2018) reports; the PDFs opened are scanned images our reader could not read, and none is newer than 2018.
- Contracting Opportunities page posts closed 2017-2018 RFPs (food service, medical, jail fire alarm), not the contracts themselves.
- No death-in-custody record, court order or federal investigation found on the sheriff pages opened.
- County site (one search used): FY2026 adopted budget shows Sheriff $104,325,152; FY2025 proposed budget describes the County Jail Fund.
- What was tried: https://www.dekalbcountyga.gov/ root refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED); county pages opened from search results.
- 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 DeKalb 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