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

The Detention Center

Tioga County Jail

Operated byTioga County Sheriff's Office
Jail address103 Corporate Drive, Owego, NY 13827
Rated capacity103
DesignDirect supervision, maximum security
BailCash or credit card at the jail lobby, or through GovPayNet using pay location code 1784; a non-refundable service fee applies
Jail AdministratorLieutenant Chad Edwards

Source: Tioga 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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Tioga 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 builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds103

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Gary W. Howard

Runs the jailYes - the Sheriff's Office Corrections Division runs the Tioga County Jail

Still needed

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

Source: Tioga 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.

Tioga 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.
NoteNine legislators, each representing about 5,500 people; meets at the Ronald E. Dougherty Office Building, 56 Main Street, Owego.
The boardTioga County Legislature →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

The sheriff keeps a separate site, tiogacountysheriff.com, linked from the county department page; both opened.
The corrections page names the jail, gives a rated capacity of 103 and names the jail administrator; the bail page sets out both in-person and GovPayNet routes.
The 2026 adopted budget on the county site shows A3110 Sheriff at $3,981,308.77 and A3150 Jail at $4,546,147.49.
The county publishes a 2023 request for proposals for comprehensive medical and mental health services for inmates at tiogacountyny.com, but no signed contract, so contracts is recorded 'no'.
The sheriff publishes monthly segregated-confinement reporting under the HALT regulations, but no jail population figure or in-custody list.
Phone and commissary vendors are named but no rates are published; no PREA material, inspection report or death-in-custody record 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 Tioga 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