George County, Mississippi — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Not found

Operated byGeorge County Sheriff's Department
Regional correctional facilityGeorge/Greene County Correctional Facility (154 Industrial Park Road, Lucedale), shared with Greene County — holds state prisoners under an MDOC contract

Source: MDOC — George/Greene County Correctional Facility · checked 2026-09-29

Transparency rating

Not scored. George 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 Mitchell Mixon

Runs the jailYes — by law the sheriff is the jailer of the county (Miss. Code § 19-25-71)
How the office is filledElected, four-year term
CurrentNamed in the Mississippi Sheriffs' Association directory; not confirmed on a county page

Still needed

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

Source: Mississippi Sheriffs' Association directory · checked 2026-09-29

The Judges

Mississippi's circuit judges are elected state judges who hear felony cases. Bail is often first set at an initial appearance by a justice court judge, elected by district within the county, or by a county or municipal judge.

Who sets bail in George County

Circuit Court: Mississippi's Nineteenth Circuit Court District, which also serves Greene and Jackson. Circuit judges are elected district-wide to four-year terms and hear felony cases.
Justice Court: George County's justice court judges are elected by district within the county and often set bail at the first appearance.

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 Supervisors

They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.

What they controlThe county budget, including the sheriff's office and the jail, and the jail building itself. Five supervisors, each elected from a district. In fifteen counties, the county also runs a regional correctional facility that holds state prisoners under a contract with the Department of Corrections.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations. By law the sheriff is the jailer of the county and hires the jailers (Miss. Code 19-25-71). No state agency inspects the jail.
NoteNo county government website was reached; board page and minutes not found.
The boardGeorge County Board of Supervisors
Where the jail money is decidedNot found

Notes on the record

The sheriff's own site georgecountymssheriff.com opened (home page only). It is dedicated to the memory of Sheriff Garry Welford and does not name the current sheriff on the home page.
The home page menu lists a Corrections Division and an Inmate Search, but both sub-pages were refused by the site's robots rules, so the jail could not be examined. Checks left empty rather than scored.
Sheriff name taken from the Mississippi Sheriffs' Association directory (355 Cox St. #B, Lucedale); not confirmed on a county page.
Regional correctional facility: MDOC lists the George/Greene County Correctional Facility at 154 Industrial Park Road, Lucedale, operated through the county sheriff's department under an MDOC agreement. It holds state prisoners and is separate from the county jail. MDOC is a fact source only.
What was tried: georgecountyms.com and georgecountyms.gov (refused, provenance); sheriff inmateSearch and correctionsDivision (robots); historyOfTheSheriff and contactUs (refused, provenance).
Seat: not confirmed on a page we opened; the sheriff's site places the department in Lucedale.
State inspection/oversight: Mississippi has no state agency that inspects county jails. The State Department of Health's jail inspections ended when the Legislature stopped funding them in 2017.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in George 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 supervisors who pay for the jail, and the judges who set bail.

Names verified 2026-09-29 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered