St. Lawrence County, New York — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

St. Lawrence County Correctional Facility

Operated bySt. Lawrence County Sheriff's Office
Jail address17 Commerce Lane, Canton, NY 13617
Rated capacity164 single cells; 186 with double-cell authorization
Year built2009
CostAbout $32.5 million
Commissary deposit fees$4.00 at the lobby kiosk, $4.95 by credit card, phone or web
BailIn person 24 hours a day by cash, credit card or bail bond, or remotely through GovPayNet
Jail AdministratorPeggy Harper, Warden (Timothy Amo II, Deputy Warden)

Source: St. Lawrence County Correctional Facility · 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 — not published
✗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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what St. Lawrence 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 built2009
Original costAbout $32.5 million
Paid for byNot found
Beds164 single cells; 186 with double-cell authorization

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Patrick R. Engle

Runs the jailYes - the Sheriff's Office Correctional Division runs the St. Lawrence County Correctional Facility
Sheriff's office address48 Court Street, Building #8, Canton, NY 13617

Still needed

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

Source: St. Lawrence 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.

St. Lawrence 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.
The boardSt. Lawrence County Board of Legislators →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

The sheriff's correctional pages are the fullest in this group on building facts: year built 2009, about $32.5 million, 164 single cells rising to 186 under double-cell authorization, and named warden and deputy warden.
Commissary deposit fees are published as dollar figures; bail can be posted in person around the clock or remotely.
The county posts adopted budgets from 1996 to 2026 in its own document folder, but the individual PDFs have no direct URL our reader could open, so budget is recorded 'no'.
No in-custody list, PREA material, inspection report or death-in-custody record found on the county 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 St. Lawrence 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