Albany County, New York — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Albany County Correctional Facility

Operated byAlbany County Sheriff's Office
Jail address840 Albany-Shaker Road, Albany, NY 12211 (NYS Commission of Correction facility list)
Location as the county describes itAlbany Shaker Road, Town of Colonie
Year built1931, per the county's Corrections page
Who is heldPeople held for local justice courts, superior courts and federal courts

Source: Albany County Sheriff — Corrections · checked 2026-09-20

Transparency rating

2/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
✗Deaths in custody — not published
✓PREA audits
✗Independent inspection — not published
✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
✗How to post bond — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Albany County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-20. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year built1931
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Craig D. Apple Sr.

Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office operates the Albany County Correctional Facility through its Corrections division
How the office is filledElected county sheriff
Office sizeOver 700 employees, per the Sheriff's About page

Still needed

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

Source: Albany County Sheriff · checked 2026-09-20

The Judges

New York's county and supreme court justices are state judicial officers, not county officials; city, town and village justices also set bail for people arrested in their areas.

Albany County Circuit Court

Not found

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 2026-09-20

The County Legislature or Board of Supervisors

They pay for the jail. In most counties the sheriff runs it.

What they controlThe jail budget, the building itself, and the agreements that rent its beds to other agencies. Several counties also have an elected County Executive. In Westchester a county Department of Correction runs the jail rather than the sheriff.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations, and state oversight. The sheriff is separately elected and keeps the jail in most counties (NY Correction Law art. 20), while the State Commission of Correction sets the standards, inspects the facility and investigates every death in custody. The five New York City counties have no county sheriff jail at all — the city Department of Correction runs them.
NoteAlbany County also has an elected County Executive.
The boardAlbany County Legislature →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

The website in the state facility list (albanycounty.com) is refused by our reader; the county's live domain is albanycountyny.gov and that is where the checks were judged.
The Corrections page names the facility, gives 1931 as the year built, and lists Prison Rape Elimination Act compliance among its subjects.
No rated capacity or daily population figure was found on any county page we opened.
Inmate location is offered only through the statewide VINE service, not a county-hosted roster, so roster is recorded no.
The county publishes budget books by year at albanycountyny.gov/countybudget, but the pages expose no document links to our reader, so no budget line was seen and budget is recorded no rather than yes.
A HALT Act segregated-confinement page exists at albanycountyny.gov/halt-information but its report files were not exposed to our reader.
No county page we opened names the county seat, so seat_source is left empty.
State inspection/oversight: New York's State Commission of Correction oversees every local correctional facility in the state, sets the minimum standards they must meet, inspects them, and investigates every death in custody.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Albany 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 who runs this jail is elected. So are the legislators who pay for it.

Names verified 2026-09-20 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered