The Suwannee County Inmate Population
Suwannee County runs one county jail. The Suwannee County Sheriff's Office operates the Suwannee County Jail in Live Oak, and the sheriff calls it the booking and intake point for every law enforcement agency working in the county. That means a person arrested by a sheriff's deputy, by the Live Oak Police Department, or by a state agency is booked into the same jail. The Suwannee County inmate population is therefore counted at one place, not spread across several local lockups.
The number is not fixed. It rises and falls with arrests, with bond decisions, and with how fast cases move through court. A felony conviction that carries more than a year sends a person out of the jail and into the Florida Department of Corrections, so that person leaves the county count and joins the state count. Two state prisons sit inside the county, but the people held in them are a separate population from the jail and should not be added to the jail's daily total.
Suwannee County Inmate Population Statistics
The Florida Department of Corrections publishes a monthly county detention report that tracks the jail. In October 2025, the report listed an average daily population of 146 people in the Suwannee County Jail, against an authorized capacity of 235 beds. The same report set the county incarceration rate at 3.1 per 1,000 residents and put the jail at about 0.27 percent of the statewide county-detention total. The sheriff's own jail page is the source for the 235-bed figure.
A roster-driven research project, the Jail Data Initiative population dashboard, tracks county jails from their public rosters and confirms the 235-bed capacity for Suwannee. Its dashboard is a useful cross-check on the official monthly figures.
The dashboard pulls its numbers straight from the same sheriff roster the public uses, which is why its capacity matches the official count. Use it for context, and use the sheriff roster for who is in custody right now.
| Measure | Figure | Source / Year |
|---|---|---|
| Authorized capacity | 235 | Suwannee County Sheriff jail page, 2026 |
| Average daily population | 146 | FDC County Detention report, Oct 2025 |
| Incarceration rate (per 1,000) | 3.1 | FDC County Detention report, Oct 2025 |
| Felony pretrial held | 76 | FDC County Detention report, Oct 2025 |
Suwannee County Inmate Population Trends
The jail count has held in a steady band in recent years. Florida's monthly detention reports show the average daily population moving between 139 and 156 across captured months in 2025, with October landing at 146. None of those months pushed past the 235-bed capacity. Looking further back, the Vera Institute's county dataset tracks Suwannee from 1970 forward and shows a long climb from the teens to roughly 150 by 2000, then a plateau and a softer recent range in the mid-130s.
| Period | Average Daily Population | Source |
|---|---|---|
| May 2025 | 139 | FDC County Detention report |
| June 2025 | 156 | FDC County Detention report |
| July 2025 | 144 | FDC County Detention report |
| October 2025 | 146 | FDC County Detention report |
| 2024 (year) | 133.7 | Vera Institute, FIPS 12121 |
Read the trend with care. The Florida monthly reports and the Vera yearly values use different methods and time windows, so they will not match to the person. Both still tell the same story for the Suwannee County inmate population: a small jail that runs well below its rated beds and swings month to month rather than growing without limit.
Who Makes Up the Suwannee County Inmate Population
Most people in the jail have not been to trial yet. The October 2025 detention report put the total pretrial share at 60.3 percent, with 76 people held on felony charges before trial and 12 on misdemeanor charges. Earlier 2025 months ran higher, with pretrial shares above 70 percent in June and July. A pretrial detainee is someone held while a case is open, not a person who has been convicted.
- Pretrial vs. sentenced - pretrial detainees were a clear majority through 2025, often 60 to 73 percent of the count.
- Men, women, and juveniles - the sheriff says the jail houses males, females, and juveniles charged or sentenced as adults.
- Felony vs. misdemeanor - felony pretrial numbers ran far above misdemeanor pretrial in the captured months.
- Holds for other agencies - a roster record can carry a hold, and one captured Suwannee record showed an ICE hold that can block release.
Local population context helps explain the rate. The U.S. Census Bureau put the county at an estimated 48,149 residents on July 1, 2025, spread across about 689 square miles.
Those Census figures from the QuickFacts page for Suwannee County matter because a jail of 146 looks small in raw numbers but reads as a meaningful rate in a county this size.
Suwannee County Jail Capacity and Overcrowding
The jail is authorized for 235 beds, and recent average daily counts in the 130s to 150s leave real headroom. No official report reviewed here shows the Suwannee County Jail running over capacity in 2024 or 2025. The county did invest in the building. A 2022 county bid funded new interior and exterior security screens on dozens of cell windows, and the county commission awarded that contract in March 2022. That is maintenance and security work, not an expansion forced by crowding.
Note: No reliable live total for everyone in custody right now is published, because the public roster loads results in batches rather than a single count.
Laws Governing the Suwannee County Inmate Population
Florida law is why these numbers and records are open at all. Chapter 119, the state public records law, treats material an agency makes or receives in the course of business as a public record, with named exemptions. Jail standards and death-in-custody rules add a second layer that governs how the jail runs and how a death in custody is reviewed. Read together, these laws make the jail roster, the booking facts, and the population reports something the public can see.
Key Statutes:
Florida Statutes Chapter 119 - the public records law that makes agency records, including jail booking data, open to inspection unless an exemption applies.
Florida Statutes § 951.23 - requires county jail operators to follow at least the Florida Model Jail Standards covering housing capacity, medical care, classification, and inspections.
Florida Statutes § 406.11 - gives the medical examiner jurisdiction over deaths in a jail, prison, or police custody.
The standards in section 951.23 are minimums, not goals. The Florida Sheriffs Association keeps the Florida Model Jail Standards, and a death in custody triggers reporting that the FDLE Death in Custody Reporting Act page describes.
Suwannee County and the State Prison Population
Suwannee has a large prison footprint for a rural county. Two Florida Department of Corrections facilities sit at 5964 U.S. Highway 90 in Live Oak: Suwannee Correctional Institution and its annex. Both hold sentenced adult men, not county pretrial detainees. A Florida Legislature profile reported three state prison facilities in the county and 1,947 state prisoners physically held there on June 30, 2020. That prison population is counted by the state, searched through the state locator, and kept separate from the county jail's daily total.
The split matters for anyone counting heads. Adding the jail's 146 to the prison's roughly 1,900 would badly overstate the local jail picture. The jail count is the Suwannee County inmate population in the everyday sense. The prison count belongs to the Florida Department of Corrections statewide system.
How to Search the Suwannee County Inmate Population
The official county roster is SMARTCOP JAIL View, hosted on the sheriff's site. It is free and public, with no login. The page opens on a default view labeled BOOKED Last 24 Hours, so recent bookings show even before you type anything. To find a specific person, you run a name or date search. You need at least one search field filled, or the page asks you to add a search criterion.
- Open the SMARTCOP JAIL View roster for Suwannee County.
- Type the person's last name. First and middle name fields help narrow common names.
- To find someone recently let go, change Search For to Released Inmates Only or Both Current And Released, which reveals the release-date fields.
- Click Submit, then open a result to read the charges, bond, holds, and booking date.
- If the person was sentenced to state prison, search the Florida Department of Corrections locator instead of the county roster.
Current Inmate Lookup in Suwannee County
The roster search form gives you several fields. Name fields are the everyday way to find someone, and booking-date fields help when you know roughly when an arrest happened. The Search For selector decides whether you see current inmates, released inmates, or both. No official refresh rate is posted for the county roster, so treat the default 24-hour view as a recent-bookings list rather than a live, to-the-minute count.
| Field Label | Type | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last Name | Text | One field required | Main search field for the public. |
| First Name | Text | No | Narrows common last names. |
| Begin / End Booking Date | Date | No | Narrows a recent booking search. |
| Search For | Dropdown | No | Current, Released, or Both. |
| Sorted By / Order | Dropdown | No | Name or Booking Date; Ascending or Descending. |
Past and Released Inmate Records
Released and past inmates are not always visible at first glance. The roster hides its release-date fields until you switch the Search For selector to a release-inclusive option. Once you pick Released Inmates Only or Both Current And Released, you can enter a begin and end release date. No official rule sets how long a released person stays listed, so a name may drop off without a fixed window. When the roster comes up empty, the sheriff records line is the fallback for older booking records, and a sentenced person will have moved to the state locator.
What a Suwannee County Inmate Record Shows
A roster entry packs a lot into one screen. The captured Suwannee sample showed a booking photo with an Enlarge Photo link, the person's name, a race and sex marker, custody status, a booking number, an MNI number, the booking date and time, age at booking, a top-level bond amount, the address given, any holds, and a charge table. The charge table lists statute, court case number with agency, charge, degree, level, and bond. It does not show date of birth, height, weight, housing pod, or a court date.
| Field | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Booking Number | The jail's unique number for that booking, such as SCSO26JBN000649. |
| Booking Date | Date and time of intake, shown as month, day, year, and clock time. |
| Charges | Statute, court case number with arresting agency, charge, degree, level, and bond. |
| Bond Amount | A top-level total plus per-charge bond; a $0.00 total does not always mean release. |
| Holds | Detainers such as an ICE hold that can keep a person in custody. |
| Custody Status | The current status, such as In Jail. |
County Jail vs. State Prison: Where to Look
The single most common mistake is searching the wrong system. The county jail holds pretrial detainees and people serving less than a year, and they show on the sheriff's roster. Sentenced felons doing more than a year sit in a state prison and show in the Florida Department of Corrections locator. A person can vanish from the county roster after sentencing and reappear in the state system days or weeks later.
| County Jail | State Prison (DOC) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who Is Held | Pretrial plus short county sentences | Sentenced felons, over one year |
| Run By | Suwannee County Sheriff | Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) |
| Where to Look | SMARTCOP JAIL View roster | FDC Corrections Offender Network |
| Photo Shown | Booking photo on the roster | FDC inmate photo on the locator |
State and Federal Inmate Search
Once you move past the county jail, three more locators cover the rest of the picture. The Florida Department of Corrections runs the statewide search for sentenced state prisoners. The federal Bureau of Prisons covers people sentenced in federal court since 1982. ICE runs an online detainee locator for immigration custody. Each one covers a different slice, and none of them replaces the county roster for a fresh local arrest.
The state search lives on the FDC Corrections Offender Network menu, which lists population, release, and supervised-population searches.
From that menu you reach the population search for sentenced inmates, while the federal BOP inmate locator and the ICE detainee locator handle federal and immigration custody. VINELink adds custody-change notifications once you have found the person in the right system.
Suwannee County Detention Facilities
Three facilities hold part of the population tied to Suwannee County. One is the county jail, searched through the sheriff's roster. The other two are state prisons, searched through the Florida Department of Corrections. The county jail and the two prisons are run by different agencies and use different lookup tools.
- Suwannee County Jail - the sheriff-run county jail for pretrial detainees and short county sentences.
- Suwannee Correctional Institution - a state prison for sentenced adult men, run by the Florida Department of Corrections.
- Suwannee Correctional Institution Annex - the state prison annex for sentenced adult men, parent institution Suwannee CI.
Booking detail for a county arrest sits on the jail inmate records page, and booking photos are covered on the jail roster mugshots page.
Common Suwannee County Custody Terms
A few terms come up again and again when reading a roster record or a jail report. Short definitions keep the rest of the page clear.
- Pretrial detainee
- A person held while a case is open, before any trial or plea.
- Booking number
- The jail's unique number for one booking, used to track the record.
- Hold or detainer
- A notice from another agency, such as ICE, that can block release even if bond is set.
- FDC
- The Florida Department of Corrections, the state prison system for sentenced felons.
Suwannee County Inmate Population FAQ
How big is the Suwannee County inmate population?
The county jail averaged 146 people in October 2025, according to the Florida Department of Corrections monthly detention report, against an authorized capacity of 235 beds. Recent months in 2025 ran between 139 and 156. There is no published live count for the exact number in custody at this moment, because the roster loads in batches rather than a single total.
How do I search the Suwannee County inmate population?
Use the sheriff's SMARTCOP JAIL View roster. It is free and needs no login. Enter a last name, or use the booking-date fields, then submit. To find a released person, switch the Search For selector to a release-inclusive option so the release-date fields appear. For a sentenced state prisoner, search the Florida Department of Corrections locator instead.
Does the county jail count include the state prisons?
No. The Suwannee County Jail count and the two state prisons in the county are separate populations. The jail holds pretrial detainees and short county sentences. Suwannee Correctional Institution and its annex hold sentenced state inmates and are searched through the Florida Department of Corrections, not the county roster.