The Detention Center
Oswego County Jail
- Operated byOswego County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- Jail address39 Churchill Road, Oswego, NY 13126 (NYS Commission of Correction list)
- How it is runDirect supervision - people live in units the county calls pods at the Public Safety Center
- Rated capacityNot found on the county's own pages
Source: Oswego County Sheriff - Corrections Division · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Don Hilton
- Runs the jailYes - the Sheriff's Corrections Division runs the county jail
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff (NY County Law art. 17)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Oswego County Sheriff's Office · 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.
Oswego 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.
- NoteOswego County is governed by a County Legislature; its published address is 46 E. Bridge St., Oswego.
- The boardOswego County Legislature →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The Corrections Division page itself never writes the words "Oswego County Jail"; the county's own jail visitation document does, so the named check rests on that document.
- Both the visitation document and the adopted budget book are county files served from the county CMS file host (cms3.revize.com) and linked from county pages - the county-domain URLs redirect there.
- The 2026 adopted budget book carries a "County Sheriff 3110" line and a "Jail 3150" line; the portion our reader returned showed the account lines but not their dollar figures.
- The Corrections Division page sets out how to post bail and where to deposit money, so bond_info is a yes.
- The inmate lookup the county links is a commercial aggregator, so the roster check is a no.
- No capacity figure, deaths record, PREA material, inspection copy, contract or fee rate was found on the county's own site.
- 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 Oswego 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