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

The Detention Center

Adult Detention Center (as named by the Sheriff's Office)

Operated byMorgan County Sheriff's Office
Sheriff's Office address1380 Monticello Road, Madison, GA 30650
Who is heldPre-trial detainees and people sentenced to less than 365 days
Budget line3326 JAIL OPERATIONS, $3,223,808 in the FY2026 budget

Source: Morgan County — Sheriff's Office Divisions · checked 2026-09-29

Transparency rating

2/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Morgan County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-29. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

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 Tyler Hooks

Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office Detention Center division "provide[s] 24/7 security for both pre-trial detainees as well as sentenced individuals to less than 365 days"
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: Morgan 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 Morgan County

Superior Court: the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit, which also serves Baldwin, Greene, Jasper, Jones, Putnam, Wilkinson and Hancock. 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 Morgan 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.
The boardMorgan County Board of Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

What was tried: a direct fetch of the directory website morgancountyga.gov was refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED); one search returned www.morgancountyga.gov/159/Sheriffs-Office, and the county site then opened (Georgia confirmed).
The sheriff has no separate website among the links; the county's Sheriff's Office pages name Sheriff Tyler Hooks and describe an Adult Detention Center Division.
FY2026 county budget shows 3326 JAIL OPERATIONS ($3,223,808), including a 'Prisoner Housing Fee' line of $15,000 with no further detail.
Sheriff's Divisions page lists background-check ($10), fingerprint ($5) and civil-service ($50) fees, none of them jail phone, video, commissary or booking rates.
No roster, capacity, bond, PREA, inspection, death-in-custody or contract material found on the county pages opened.
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 Morgan 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