The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byIrwin County Sheriff's Office
- Jail/Detention contact address132 Cotton Drive, Ocilla, GA 31774
- Bookings123 inmates booked in 2026 Q2 (sheriff's quarterly jail report)
- Jail operations spending FY2025$183,836 actual against $200,000 budget (county financial report)
- Jail Improvement FundAn additional 10% on fines collected, for jail additions and improvements
Source: Irwin County Sheriff's Office — Contact Us · checked 2026-09-29
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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
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 Cody Youghn
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office lists its own jail/detention contact and files the jail's quarterly Criminal Alien Track and Report
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- Office address400 South Irwin Avenue, Ocilla, GA 31774
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Irwin County Sheriff's Office — Our Team · 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 Irwin County
- Superior Court: the Tifton Judicial Circuit, which also serves Tift, Worth and Turner. 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 Irwin 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.
- The boardIrwin County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Sheriff site irwincountysheriff.org opened and confirmed Irwin County, Georgia; it names Sheriff Cody Youghn, matching the directory lead.
- The sheriff site has only five pages (home, team, sex offenders, immigration report, contact); it gives a jail/detention contact at 132 Cotton Drive, Ocilla but no jail name, capacity, roster, bond, visitation, fee or PREA material.
- Sheriff posts quarterly Criminal Alien Track and Report figures (bookings and detainers) for 2025–2026.
- County FY2025 financial report (fiscal year ended August 31, 2025) shows budget and actual for Sheriff ($1,470,423 actual) and Jail operations ($183,836 actual), and a Jail Improvement Fund; it gives Ocilla as county seat.
- County home page irwincounty-ga.gov was refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED); the financial report and a June 29, 2026 BOC workshop PDF from the county domain opened after one search.
- 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 Irwin 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