The Detention Center
Ulster County Jail
- Operated byUlster County Sheriff's Office (Corrections Division)
- Jail address129 Schwenk Drive, Kingston, NY 12401 (NYS Commission of Correction facility list)
- Share of county spendingThe county comptroller's 2020 corrections audit says the Sheriff's Corrections Division accounts for 7% of total county expenditures
Source: Ulster County Sheriff's Office — Divisions · checked 2026-09-20
Transparency rating
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
Not found
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office lists a Corrections Division among its four divisions
- DivisionsCriminal, Corrections, Civil and U.R.G.E.N.T.
- Office historyThe county says the Sheriff's Office was established in 1661
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Ulster County Sheriff's Office — Divisions · 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.
Ulster 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.
- NoteThe county legislature page redirects to legislature.ulstercountyny.gov, which our reader could not open.
- The boardUlster County Legislature
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- Thin entry by refusal, not by absence: the sheriff's own site (ulstersheriffny.gov) and the county's sheriff pages at ulstercountyny.gov/sheriff and /Government/Elected-Offices/Sheriff were all refused to our reader by robots rules.
- What did open on the county's own domain: the home page, the Departments & Agencies page, the sheriff's Divisions page (which lists a Corrections Division but does not name the jail) and the County Budget page.
- Budget: the county publishes the 2026 adopted operating budget and capital program on its own transparency pages; the adopted budget PDF was too large for our reader, so the jail line could not be quoted. The county comptroller's own site states corrections is 7% of county expenditures.
- The county comptroller (comptroller.ulstercountyny.gov, a county domain) has published a Sheriff Corrections audit and an inmate commissary audit; those are audits by a county officer, not a Commission of Correction inspection report, so the inspections check stays "no".
- No sheriff's name appears on any county page we could open, so it is recorded as Not found rather than guessed.
- Not scored: The sheriff's own site and both county sheriff pages were refused by robots; only the home page, an agencies list, a divisions stub and a budget page were read, as the record itself states. Marking the rest 'not published' would claim more than was checked. Found published on the pages that did open: budget.
- 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 Ulster 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