The Detention Center
Niagara County Jail
- Operated byNiagara County Sheriff's Office (Corrections Division)
- Jail address5526 Niagara Street Extension, Lockport, NY 14095 — from the NYS Commission of Correction facility list supplied with this assignment; county documents place the jail in Lockport but give no street address
- Daily populationAbout 500 people held on a daily basis, and more than 6,000 over a year, as the county manager's comprehensive-plan chapter gives it
- Holding for other agenciesThe same chapter says the jail earned the county about $2.7 million in revenue in 2006, mainly from housing people for federal and state law enforcement and corrections agencies
- Phone contractThe Legislature's April 2026 minutes carry a sixth amendment to a Securus contract for inmate communication services
Source: Niagara County comprehensive plan — county services and facilities chapter · 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
- ✗How to post bond — not published
- ✗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
- BedsNot found — no rated capacity published; the county gives a daily population of about 500
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Michael Filicetti
- Runs the jailYes — the county manager's comprehensive-plan chapter says the County Jail is run by the Corrections Division of the Office of the Sheriff, the largest division of that office.
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff (New York County Law art. 17); the county's own chapter calls it an elected position
- Corrections staffingAbout 145 correction officers and 40 civilian support staff, as the county chapter gives it
- Sheriff's phone716-439-7000, as listed on the county departments index
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Niagara County Legislature minutes, 21 April 2026 · 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.
Niagara 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.
- NoteThe Legislature meets at the Niagara County Courthouse, 175 Hawley Street, Lockport. Its chairman is Michael A. Hill.
- The boardNiagara County Legislature →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The sheriff's own website is closed to our reader, so everything here comes from the county's own domain instead.
- What was tried: the supplied URL niagaracounty.com/Departments/Sheriff returned 404; the niagaracounty.com root redirected to niagaracounty.gov, which opened; niagaracounty.gov/departments/s-z/sheriff/index.php returned 404; the county's departments index lists the Sheriff but links off-site; niagarasheriff.com and niagarasheriff.gov were both refused by robots.txt.
- The sheriff's name comes from the county Legislature's own minutes of 21 April 2026, which name Sheriff Michael Filicetti in a proclamation.
- Those same minutes name the Niagara County Jail in resolutions and carry a sixth amendment to a Securus contract for inmate communication services, which is a published phone contract.
- The county manager's comprehensive-plan chapter puts the jail under the Corrections Division of the Office of the Sheriff and gives a daily population of about 500, and more than 6,000 people over a year. That chapter cites 2006 revenue figures and so appears dated; no rated capacity is published anywhere on the county's site.
- The same chapter says the jail earned about $2.7 million in 2006, mainly from housing people for federal and state agencies. That is the county's own wording and is recorded as published, not characterised.
- The county publishes adopted and tentative budget books from 2002 to 2026 on its Budget and Management page.
- No public roster, PREA page, death-in-custody record, county copy of an inspection report, bail guidance or fee schedule was found on the county domain.
- The jail street address comes from the state Commission of Correction facility list supplied with this assignment, not from any county page, and is labelled as such.
- 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 Niagara 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