The Detention Center
Harris County Jail (county site calls it "County Jail")
- Operated byHarris County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address9825 SR 116, P.O. Box 286, Hamilton, GA 31811 (a second county jail page gives 9989 Hwy 116)
- Capacity100 bed holding facility
- Separate facilityHarris County Prison (160 beds), run under the County Manager, houses state-sentenced inmates for a Georgia Department of Corrections per-inmate fee
- Jail AdministratorChristie Webb, Jail Administrator
Source: Harris County — County Jail · checked 2026-09-29
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
- Beds100
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Mike Jolley
- Runs the jailYes — Georgia sheriffs are the jailers of their counties by law (O.C.G.A. 42-4-1)
- CurrentNamed on the county's County Jail pages
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Harris County — County Jail · 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 Harris County
- Superior Court: the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit, which also serves Chattahoochee, Marion, Muscogee, Talbot and Taylor. 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 Harris 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.
- NoteFive members elected by district for staggered four-year terms; meets at the courthouse in Hamilton
- The boardHarris County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Directory root harriscountysheriff.org refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED); one search returned the county's jail page. A later fetch of harriscountysheriff.org opened only welcome text with no links; its contactUs page was blocked by robots.txt.
- County site harriscountyga.gov (confirmed Georgia, seat Hamilton) has two County Jail pages: 100-bed jail, Sheriff Mike Jolley, Jail Administrator Christie Webb; the two pages give different street numbers on SR/Hwy 116.
- No roster, visitation, bond, fee, PREA, death, inspection or contract material found on the county jail pages.
- County prison page (a separate facility under the County Manager) says it houses state-sentenced inmates and receives daily per-inmate fees from the Georgia Department of Corrections; scored for the jail only.
- Budget: the county's Administration page sends budgets to an external University of Georgia site, not the county domain, so budget is scored no.
- Not scored: The sheriff's own website showed only welcome text to our reader; only the county's jail pages were read. Marking the rest 'not published' would claim more than was checked. Found published on the pages that did open: named, capacity.
- 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 Harris 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