The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byHancock County Sheriff's Office (Corrections Division)
- Address given for Corrections Division8450 Highway 90, Bay St. Louis, MS 39520
- Roster hostingInmate Lookup on the sheriff's site, hosted by JailTracker
- Jail AdministratorWarden Brandon Zeringue (Corrections Division)
Source: Hancock County Sheriff's Office — Divisions · 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 Johnny Alison
- 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
- Named onHancock County Sheriff's Office home and Executive Staff pages
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Hancock County Sheriff's Office — Executive Staff · 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 Hancock County
- Circuit Court: Mississippi's Second Circuit Court District, which also serves Harrison and Stone. Circuit judges are elected district-wide to four-year terms and hear felony cases.
- Justice Court: Hancock County's justice court judges are elected by district within the county and often set bail at the first appearance.
- 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.
- NoteCounty site not reached; board page and minutes not opened.
- The boardHancock County Board of Supervisors
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- Sheriff's own site hancockso.com names Sheriff Johnny Alison, Chief Deputy Jeremy Skinner and, on the Divisions page, Warden Brandon Zeringue of the Corrections Division.
- The sheriff's menu links an Inmate Lookup on its own domain (hancock_inmatelist.html, JailTracker-hosted); credited as the county's own roster.
- The site links an Inmate Handbook, Inmate Visitation and FAQs page, but when opened our reader received only the site's navigation bar, not the page body. Fees, bond, PREA and capacity on those pages are therefore UNVERIFIED — the 'no' marks for them reflect what our reader could see, not confirmed absence.
- The Divisions page describes a Corrections Division at the sheriff's address but gives no published name for the jail building.
- What was tried: hancockcounty.ms.gov (refused, provenance); hancockso.com root and contact_us.html (redirect https to http, skipped per method); InmateRoster/ directory (refused, provenance).
- Seat: not confirmed on a page we opened; the sheriff's office address is in Bay St. Louis.
- Not scored: Sheriff's jail pages (Inmate Handbook, Visitation, FAQs) returned only the navigation bar, so fees/bond/PREA/capacity 'no's are unverified, not examined. Marking the rest 'not published' would claim more than was checked. Found published on the pages that did open: roster.
- 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 Hancock 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