The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byWebster County Sheriff's Office
- Sheriff's office address40 Cemetery Rd., Preston, GA
Source: Webster County — Sheriff page · 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 Randy Dely
- 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
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Webster County Sheriff's Office — Contacts · 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 Webster County
- Superior Court: the Southwestern Judicial Circuit, which also serves Lee, Macon, Schley, Stewart and Sumter. 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 Webster 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 boardWebster County Board of Commissioners (Webster County Consolidated Government) →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Sheriff's own site (home and Contacts pages) names Sheriff Randy Dely; Contacts lists sheriff, chief deputy, secretary and deputies — no jail staff.
- No jail name, jail address or statement of where prisoners are held found on the sheriff's site or the county's Sheriff, Directory, Commissioners or home pages.
- County home page links budgets/audits on ted.cviog.uga.edu (UGA), not the county domain — budget scored no.
- Commissioners page links meeting minutes; board meets second Tuesday monthly, 4:30 p.m.
- What was tried: webstercountyga.org/elected/sheriff.htm redirects https to http (skipped per brief); sheriff FAQ page refused (HTTP 429 rate limit).
- Searches used: 1.
- Not scored: The sheriff's FAQ page was refused by our reader; only the sheriff's home and contacts 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 Webster 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