The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byLaurens County Sheriff's Office
- Jail AdministratorDonella Peacock (Jail Captain)
Source: Laurens County, GA — Sheriff's Office staff listing · 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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Larry Dean
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office staff list includes a Jail Captain; Georgia sheriffs are the jailers of their counties by law (O.C.G.A. 42-4-1)
- 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: Laurens County, GA — Sheriff's Office staff listing · 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 Laurens County
- Superior Court: the Dublin Judicial Circuit, which also serves Johnson, Twiggs and Treutlen. 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 Laurens 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 boardNot found
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- One search restricted to the county domain showed the county site (laurenscoga.org) has a Detention Center page, a Detention Center staff directory and a 'Quarterly Jail Report 2025 October–December' document — none could be opened.
- What was tried: laurenscoga.org root and www root (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED / connection timeout), Sheriff page (403), Detention Center page, Divisions page, staff directories and the quarterly jail report (robots.txt fetch timed out; later rate limited).
- Only one county page opened (laurenscoga.org/370/Online-Resources); it listed Sheriff Larry Dean and command staff including Jail Captain Donella Peacock, main office 478-272-1522.
- laurenscountysheriff.org is Laurens County, South Carolina — not used.
- Checks left empty: the jail pages were refused, so the county was not examined. Worth a re-run: the county appears to publish quarterly jail reports.
- 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 Laurens 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