Florence County, South Carolina — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Florence County Detention Center

Operated bySheriff's Office
LocationEffingham, S.C. (sheriff's detention page)
Jail address6719 Friendfield Road, Effingham, SC 29541 (association directory; county magistrate page lists the Effingham magistrate office at the same address)
Rated capacity520 beds (sheriff's detention page)
Detention center phone (association directory)843-665-9944
FY2026-27 budgetFlorence Co Detention Center (421-421-200) $13,217,994; Sheriff's Office (421-421-110) $20,819,317

Source: Florence County Sheriff's Office - Detention Center · checked 2026-09-29

Transparency rating

Not scored. Florence County's and its sheriff's own websites could not be reached or read in the session that produced this record, so their disclosures were never examined. This is a gap in the research, not a finding about the county.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds520 (sheriff's detention page)

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff T.J. Joye

CurrentNamed on the Florence County Sheriff's Office home page (fcso.org), checked 2026-09-29
Runs the jailSheriff's Office — the Florence County Detention Center is listed among the Sheriff's Office departments on fcso.org

Still needed

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

Source: Florence County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-09-29

The Judges

South Carolina's circuit court judges are elected by the General Assembly and hear felony cases. For most charges a magistrate sets bond soon after arrest; for offenses punishable by death or life imprisonment only a circuit judge can.

Who sets bail in Florence County

Circuit Court: South Carolina's Twelfth Judicial Circuit, which also serves Marion. Circuit judges are elected by the General Assembly to six-year terms and hear felony cases; for offenses punishable by death or life imprisonment only a circuit judge can set bond.
Magistrate Court: the Florence County magistrates. For most charges a magistrate sets bond soon after arrest.

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 2026-09-29

The County Council

They pay for the jail. Depending on the county, the sheriff or a county detention department runs it.

What they controlThe county budget that funds the detention center and the sheriff's office, and the jail building itself. In counties where the sheriff has handed the jail to the county, the council's administrator runs it.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations where the sheriff keeps the jail (S.C. Code 24-5-10). The state Department of Corrections inspects every detention center each year (S.C. Code 24-9-20).
NoteNine-member council; County Administrator Kevin Yokim.
The boardFlorence County Council →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Examined: fcso.org home, departments and detention center pages opened; county site florencecountysc.gov opened (home, offices, council, archives, administration, finance, magistrate, info pages; FY27 budget book; FY2025 financial report).
Sheriff's detention page: Florence County Detention Center, Effingham, S.C., a 520-bed facility; no address, director, visitation, bond, PREA, commissary or fee details on it.
fcso.org departments list includes 'PREA Investigator' and 'Food Service', but those sub-pages were refused by our reader (robots.txt), so PREA and contracts could not be credited.
County home page links 'Jail Bookings' to https://booking.fcso.org/; our reader refused it (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED), so the roster check could not be confirmed.
Our reader did not show a sheriff's name on fcso.org, so the association directory name is used.
Magistrate page says two magistrates work weekend bond duty at the jail; no step-by-step bond guidance found.
What was tried and refused: https://booking.fcso.org/ (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED); https://www.fcso.org/departments/18-prea-investigator and https://www.fcso.org/departments/1-sheriff-s-administration (robots.txt).
One WebSearch spent.
Not scored: the sheriff's PREA, food-service and jail-booking pages refused our reader; only the short detention page opened. Marking the rest 'not published' would claim more than was checked. Found published on the pages that did open: named, capacity, budget.
State inspection/oversight: The South Carolina Department of Corrections must inspect every county detention center each year and send written reports to county officials (S.C. Code 24-9-20). A county earns the inspections mark here only if it posts such a report on its own site.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Florence 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 is elected. So are the county council members who pay for the jail.

Names verified 2026-09-29 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered