The Detention Center
Pierce County Jail (aka Detention Center)
- Operated byPierce County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address300 Pierce Industrial Blvd., Blackshear, GA 31516
- Medical careMedical, basic dental and mental health care; medical staff around the clock; seriously ill inmates taken to Mayo Healthcare System in Waycross
- VisitationCell blocks A–E, one evening a week each, 15 minutes
- Jail AdministratorCaptain Kevin Britt
Source: Pierce County Sheriff's Office — Detention Center · checked 2026-09-29
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗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
- ✗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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Ramsey Bennett
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office site runs the Pierce County Jail (aka Detention Center) under its Jail Administrator section
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- In office sinceElected 2012; term began January 1, 2013 (per the Sheriff's Office home page)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Pierce 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 Pierce County
- Superior Court: the Waycross Judicial Circuit, which also serves Coffee, Charlton, Ware, Bacon and Brantley. 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 Pierce 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.
- NoteMeets the first Tuesday of each month at 6:00 PM, 705 College Ave, Blackshear. The county home page links 'Commissioners Meetings Agendas' but our reader could not extract its URL.
- The boardPierce County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Sheriff's site piercegaso.org opened; confirmed Pierce County, Georgia. Sheriff Ramsey Bennett named on the home page.
- Detention Center page names the jail, its address and Captain Kevin Britt as Jail Administrator.
- Roster: the sheriff's site links 'Inmate Search' to offenderindex.com/piercecoga, which shows current inmates and last-24-hour bookings for Pierce County.
- Bonds & Property page explains cash, property, out-of-county property and professional bonds; lists a $20 non-refundable bond fee per bond instrument. No bond schedule; no phone, video-visit or commissary rates found.
- No capacity, PREA, deaths, inspection or contract material found on the sheriff's pages opened (home, Detention Center, Visitation, Bonds & Property, Administration Staff).
- Budget: the county site pc.pcgeorgia.com opened (Board of Commissioners, seat Blackshear) but our reader could not extract its link URLs, so no budget document was reached; recorded as not found.
- What was tried: piercegaso.org home, /detention-center/, /visitation/, /bonds-property/, /administration-staff/; offenderindex.com/piercecoga; pc.pcgeorgia.com. One site-restricted search on pcgeorgia.com returned no budget document; its commissioners-meeting result was refused (robots.txt lookup failed).
- 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 Pierce 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