Clicking on any of the South Carolina Counties or Cities below will direct you to a list of all the City Jails, County Jails and Juvenile Detention Centers in that specific County.
South Carolina has 46 counties, and the sheriff runs the jail. Greenville, Richland, Charleston, and Horry are the ones most families are looking for. Alvin S. Glenn in Columbia and the Charleston County jail stay full. Spartanburg, York, and Lexington are the next size down. A small county in the Pee Dee or the upstate may have one jail and send the overflow to a neighbor when the beds run out. City police have a holding room. That is not a county jail.
A year or less stays with the sheriff. A longer felony sentence goes to the Department of Corrections. A federal sentence goes to the Bureau of Prisons. FCI Estill and FCI Bennettsville are the federal prisons in the state. When a jail holds somebody for another county, for the state, or for the Marshals, it bills a daily rate. That rate is local. There is no statewide fee.
Jails in South Carolina are the pretrial and short-sentence buildings. State prison is a different road. On September 15, 2026, the department had 17,318 people in its institutions, 15,864 men and 1,454 women. The jurisdiction total, counting designated facilities and other locations, was 17,765. That is well under the old high of about 24,000 in 2007. Kirkland is the intake prison in Columbia. Broad River, Lee, Lieber, and Allendale are the men’s prisons families ask about. Camille Griffin Graham and Leath are the women’s prisons. A man sentenced in Beaufort can end up in the upstate.
Most of the 46 counties still run a jail, and a few of the big ones run more than one building. Greenville, Richland, Charleston, and Horry hold a large share of the beds. A full jail in a small county means a ride, not a second jail in the same town.
The big counties keep a juvenile detention unit for a youth waiting on court. Charleston and Richland take youth from counties that do not have a bed. A small county in the Pee Dee often sends a youth to one of those two.
The Department of Juvenile Justice is the state side. It runs the Juvenile Detention Center in Columbia, regional evaluation centers, and the Broad River Road Complex, also in Columbia, for a longer commitment. Those are not county jails. Search the county of the arrest. The listing shows the detention center that county uses, and a DJJ facility only if the youth has been sent there.
At Alvin S. Glenn or the Charleston jail, the first day is a booking floor. Name, prints, a medical screen, a search, clothes in a bag, one call if the phones are working. The person has not been convicted. There is no phone in the cell, and no way to know if the job, the truck, or the kids got covered. Glasses stay in property until somebody signs for them. In a small county jail the same steps happen in a smaller room, with less space to split people up.
Summer sits hard on the building. The uniform does not fit. The bunk is thin, and the next bed is awake. Meals are plain and on a clock. Mail is slow. A visit from a country county to Columbia is a drive that may not happen. Withdrawal from alcohol, opioids, or methamphetamine can start before the bond hearing, and the night is when that gets loud. Deputies who apply the rules the same way to everybody run a quieter pod. Uneven rules are how contraband moves. Richland and Charleston can separate by risk. A small Pee Dee jail often cannot.
Tablets, video visits, and deposits take some of the isolation out of the bigger jails. A message home does not fix the bed or the case, and the account can be shut off. Each county page on this site lists the jail phone, the vendor, and the way to send money for that sheriff’s office.