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

The Detention Center

Wayne County Detention Center

Operated byWayne County Sheriff's Office
CommissaryMcDaniel Supply Company; orders once a week
Deposit fee$3.00 per kiosk deposit (per sheriff's Inmate Funds page)
Sheriff's office address266 E Walnut St, Jesup, GA 31546
Jail AdministratorCapt. Terry Mays, Jail Administrator (Lt. Matt Spell, Asst. Jail Administrator)

Source: Wayne County Sheriff's Office — Inmate Funds · checked 2026-09-29

Transparency rating

Not scored. Wayne 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 R.E. (Chuck) Moseley

Runs the jailYes — Georgia sheriffs are the jailers of the counties by law (O.C.G.A. 42-4-1)
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: Wayne County Sheriff's Office — Command Staff · 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 Wayne County

Superior Court: the Brunswick Judicial Circuit, which also serves Appling, Camden, Glynn and Jeff Davis. 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 Wayne 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 boardWayne County Board of Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Command Staff page names Sheriff R.E. (Chuck) Moseley and Jail Administrator Capt. Terry Mays.
Inmate Funds page names the Wayne County Detention Center and publishes a $3.00 kiosk deposit fee; phone and video rates not on that page.
Monthly stat reports are E-911 call statistics only (no jail figures). Criminal Alien quarterly reports (HB1105) are posted but give no population figures.
Document Download Center folders did not list documents to our reader.
What was tried: Detention (corrections.cfm), Inmate Inquiry, Inmate Communication and The Sheriff pages were refused by the reader (HTTP 429 rate limit) — roster, capacity, bond, PREA and phone-rate checks on those pages are unverified and scored no.
County government site (waynecountyga.us, found by search) gives county seat Jesup, names the Board of Commissioners and lists Sheriff Robert Chuck Moseley; no agendas/minutes, budget or jail links were visible to our reader — minutes field points to the Board page.
What was tried: https://www.waynecounty-ga.gov/ did not resolve.
Searches used: 1.
Not scored: The sheriff's detention, inmate inquiry and inmate communication pages were refused by our reader; only the command staff and inmate funds pages were read. Marking the rest 'not published' would claim more than was checked. Found published on the pages that did open: named, fees.
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 Wayne 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