Mitchell County, Georgia — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Not found

Operated byMitchell County Sheriff's Office
Jail/Dispatch phone229-336-2030 (county Sheriff Department page)
What was triedthe sheriff's Jail Information page could not be read

Source: Mitchell County — Sheriff Department · checked 2026-09-29

Transparency rating

Not scored. Mitchell County's and its sheriff's own websites could not be reached or read in the session that produced this record, so their disclosures were never examined. This is a gap in the research, not a finding about the county.

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 W.E. Bozeman

Runs the jailYes — Georgia sheriffs are the jailers of their counties (O.C.G.A. 42-4-1); the Sheriff's Office site carries a Jail Information page and the county lists a Jail/Dispatch number (229-336-2030)
How the office is filledElected, four-year term

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Mitchell County Sheriff's Office · 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 Mitchell County

Superior Court: the South Georgia Judicial Circuit, which also serves Baker, Calhoun, Decatur and Grady. 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 Mitchell County Magistrate Court. For most charges a magistrate sets bail soon after arrest.

Still needed

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.
NoteCommissioners meet the second Tuesday of each month; archived minutes are held on an outside system.
The boardMitchell County Board of Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

PARTIAL EXAMINATION: the sheriff's site mitchellso.com opened (Georgia confirmed, Sheriff W.E. Bozeman named) and lists a Jail Information page at mitchellso.com/inmate-visitation, but that page, the staff, history and contact pages were refused by our reader's proxy (HTTP 429 rate limit) and were not retried. The jail-specific checks (named, roster, capacity, bond, fees) are therefore unverified, not confirmed absent.
The sheriff's Support staff page and the county site mitchellcountyga.net (Sheriff Department, County Administrators, Minutes, History, Tax Information, Sitemap and Contact pages) opened; none held jail details or budget documents.
One search was spent; it returned the county's Sheriff Department page. Aggregator results were ignored.
No budget, PREA, inspection, death-in-custody or contract material found on the pages opened.
Not scored: The sheriff's jail information page and several other sheriff pages were refused by our reader; only the home and support staff pages and county pages were read. Marking the rest 'not published' would claim more than was checked.
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 Mitchell 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