The Detention Center
Criminal Justice Center (CJC)
- Operated byLee County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address119 Pinewood Road, Leesburg, GA 31763
- Capacity109-bed facility
- PurposePrimarily a holding place for persons charged with a criminal offense; also holds sentenced misdemeanor inmates
Source: Lee County — Sheriff's Office page · checked 2026-09-29
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds109
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Reggie Rachals
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office page presents the Criminal Justice Center (CJC) as its detention facility
- 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: Lee County — Sheriff's Office page · 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 Lee County
- Superior Court: the Southwestern Judicial Circuit, which also serves Macon, Schley, Stewart, Sumter and Webster. 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 Lee 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, four-year staggered terms
- The boardLee County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- County's Sheriff's Office page names the Criminal Justice Center (CJC), 119 Pinewood Road, Leesburg, as a 109-bed facility.
- Sheriff's page links its Citizen Connect portal (Southern Software, agency LeeCoSOGA), which offers an 'Inmate Confinements' search; the search page itself returned 403.
- Finance page lists proposed and approved budgets (FY2024-25 to FY2026-27) and audits, but the PDFs are blocked to our reader by robots.txt, so a sheriff/jail line could not be confirmed; budget scored no.
- No bond, fee, PREA, deaths, inspection or contract material found on the county's sheriff page.
- Board: five commissioners elected by district to four-year staggered terms.
- 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 Lee 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