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

The Detention Center

Detention Center

Operated byNot stated on the pages read
County listingThe county's Services page lists 'the Detention Center' and 'the Sheriff's Office' separately among the county's Public Safety Services
Directory jail lineHampton County Sheriff's Detention Center: 803-914-2223 (South Carolina Sheriffs' Association directory)
County offices200 Jackson Avenue East, Hampton, SC 29924; 803-914-2100

Source: Hampton County Services page · checked 2026-09-29

Transparency rating

Not scored. Hampton 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
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Anthony Russell

CurrentNamed in the South Carolina Sheriffs' Association directory; not confirmed on a county page
Runs the jailNot stated on the pages read

Still needed

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

Source: South Carolina Sheriffs' Association directory · 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 Hampton County

Circuit Court: South Carolina's Fourteenth Judicial Circuit, which also serves Jasper, Allendale, Beaufort and Colleton. 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 Hampton 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).
NoteCounty Council agendas and minutes are kept in the county Archive Center and Agenda Center.
The boardHampton County Council →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Rescue pass: county site hamptoncountysc.org opened (home, Services, Government, Agenda Center, Archive Center, Forensic Audit and the Detention Center FAQ pages); our reader could not extract the site's menu links, so no dedicated detention center or sheriff page was reached.
The county's 'Detention Center' FAQ covers when visits may start (after booking) and when a newly booked person sees a judge (next day if booked at night; 9:00am-4:00pm Monday through Sunday); it gives no instructions on posting bond.
Sheriff's website https://www.hamptoncountysheriff.org (and www.) returned HTTP 403; no own page named the sheriff, so the association directory name is used.
An archived 2011 County Council minutes page on the county site refers to a 'Detention Center Director' and the detention center as a county department; that is historical and current operator is not stated on the pages read.
What was tried: hamptoncountysc.org directory.aspx, Search and faq.aspx were refused (robots.txt); Archive Center lists Council Agendas, Council Minutes and Annual Reports but no budget document; Agenda Center lists County Council budget workshops but no budget document.
The single web search returned mainly news stories and aggregators, plus two county-site pages.
Not scored: the sheriff's website returned an error and no county detention or sheriff page could be reached beyond one FAQ. Marking the rest 'not published' would claim more than was checked. Found published on the pages that did open: named.
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 Hampton 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