The Detention Center
Chemung County Jail
- Operated byChemung County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address211 William Street, Elmira, NY 14901 (the state facility list gives 203-209 William Street, Elmira, NY 14902)
- Rated capacity262 inmates maximum
- Staffing1 Major, 2 administrative lieutenants, 3 shift lieutenants, 6 shift sergeants, 62 correction officers, 1 nurse administrator and 2 registered nurses
- Accreditation the county claimsAccredited agency through the New York State Sheriffs' Association
Source: Chemung County Sheriff — Corrections · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds262
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Not found
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office Corrections division runs the Chemung County Jail, with the Undersheriff overseeing daily operations
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Chemung County Sheriff — Corrections · 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.
Chemung County Circuit Court
- Not found
- 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.
- The boardChemung County Legislature →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The supplied civicplus mirror URL is refused by our reader; the county's live domain is chemungcountyny.gov and that is where the checks were judged.
- The Corrections page names the jail and gives the 262 maximum capacity.
- The 2023 approved budget on the county site carries both a Sheriff section and a separate Jail section.
- The bail page explains cash bail at the facility and card bail through ALLPAID.
- The phone page says calls are collect and maintained by Viapath but publishes no rates; the commissary page lists item categories but no prices, so fees stays no.
- The Sheriff's Office landing page opened but describes the office generically and names no officeholder; the Administration page, the staff directory and the Sheriff's Office brochure all returned server errors on repeated attempts, so the sheriff is recorded as Not found rather than guessing a name.
- No county-hosted in-custody roster, PREA material, inspection report, death-in-custody record or housing contract was found.
- 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 Chemung 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