The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byMadison County Sheriff's Office
Source: Georgia Sheriffs' Association 2026 Directory · 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 James Michael Moore
- CurrentNamed in the Georgia Sheriffs' Association 2026 Directory; not confirmed on a county page
- Runs the jailYes — Georgia sheriffs are the jailers of the counties by law (O.C.G.A. 42-4-1)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Georgia Sheriffs' Association 2026 Directory · 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 Madison County
- Superior Court: the Northern Judicial Circuit, which also serves Elbert, Hart, Oglethorpe and Franklin. 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 Madison 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 boardMadison County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- What was tried: madisoncountysheriffga.org root, index.php, jail.html and contact.html — every https request redirects down to http, which our reader cannot open; index.php refused.
- County government site madisoncountyga.us opened (board and department directory pages only); it links out to the sheriff's site and carries no jail material.
- Sheriff and jail pages could not be read, so no checks were scored.
- 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 Madison 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