Who Is Held at Clay County Jail
The Clay County Jail is run by the Clay County Sheriff's Office through its Detention Department. It sits at 901 North Orange Avenue in Green Cove Springs, the county seat. This is a county jail, not a state prison. It holds people at the local stage of a case, which is the early and middle part of the process. The mix changes day to day, yet the categories stay the same.
People held here include those arrested in Clay County who are waiting for a first appearance, defendants waiting for their cases to be resolved, and inmates serving county-imposed sentences. The jail also holds probation and community-control violators on local court orders, people waiting to be transferred elsewhere, and federal prisoners only when the arresting federal agency authorizes their housing. Most of the population is pretrial, meaning no conviction has been entered. Detention Director Joe Bucci leads the department. Chief of Detention Security William Arnold and Chief of Detention Administration Larry Henry head the two main divisions.
The facility is rated at 490 beds, a figure the Sheriff's Office publishes on its Detention/Jail page. The Sheriff's Office describes full accommodations for inmates with basic necessities during custody. Housing assignments depend on classification, and the public roster does not show housing units.
Clay County Jail Capacity and Population
Capacity and population are two different numbers, and both are public. The rated capacity is 490 beds, per the Clay County Sheriff's Office Detention/Jail page reviewed on June 3, 2026. The live count below is the public roster total from the county Police-to-Citizen portal on the same date. That count is a point-in-time snapshot, not a monthly average. For an average measure, the Florida Department of Corrections county detention reports listed a Clay County Jail average daily population of 394 in March 2025, with about 72 percent of that population held pretrial. Numbers move, so treat any single figure as a snapshot of its date.
The current population shown is the P2C public count recorded on June 3, 2026. At that level the jail was running near 70 percent of its rated beds. The earlier state reports showed the average daily population shifting from 441 in April 2024 down to 359 in December 2024, then up to 394 in March 2025. Each of those is a monthly average from the Florida Department of Corrections, not the same thing as the live roster total. Reading the two side by side gives a fuller picture of how full the jail tends to run.
How to Look Up an Inmate at Clay County Jail
Current county custody is searched on the official Clay County Sheriff's Office roster. The portal is the Police-to-Citizen Inmates Catalog, a free public catalog that needs no login. It is a live search tool, not a downloadable PDF. You can search by name or browse the full current list. The steps below walk through a basic lookup.
- Open the Clay County P2C Inmates Catalog in a browser.
- Search by last name, first name, middle name, age, charge, arrest date, race, or sex, or scroll the current results.
- Confirm the person by age, race, sex, height, weight, arrest date, court date, and booking agency.
- Open the inmate card to view charges, bond, docket number when present, and the booking photo if one is shown.
The roster covers people in current county custody only. Once someone is sentenced to a state prison term and received by the state, the county roster may drop them. At that point switch to the Florida Department of Corrections offender search for sentenced state prisoners. Federal sentenced prisoners appear on the federal Bureau of Prisons locator, and people in immigration custody on the ICE detainee locator. To get release alerts, register with Florida VINELink. If the roster is down or a result looks unclear, call the jail directly to confirm.
The Florida Department of Corrections offender search is the right tool the moment a person leaves county custody for state prison. You can open the state inmate search form and search by name or by DC number.
That state form returns a sentenced prisoner profile rather than a county booking record, so the fields differ from what the county roster shows. Use it only after a transfer, never for someone still held in the Clay County Jail.
Clay County Jail Address and Contact
The jail and the Sheriff's Office sit on the same campus in Green Cove Springs. For custody and jail-specific questions, call the jail line below. The Sheriff's Office runs a separate non-emergency number and a separate public-records line, so use the jail number when your question is about an inmate or a booking. Mail rules are covered further down, and the physical jail address is not the same as the regular-mail address.
Clay County Jail
901 North Orange Avenue
Green Cove Springs, FL 32043
(904) 529-5905
Operated by the Clay County Sheriff's Office
Notifications from Florida VINELink can fill the gap when the roster does not reflect a future change in custody. It is a useful backup for victims and families who want an automatic alert rather than a manual check. For records that are not shown online, such as an older booking, the Sheriff's Office public-records process is the proper route.
Visiting Someone at Clay County Jail
Visits at the Clay County Jail are video visits through InmateSales and Combined Public Communications. There are two kinds. Remote video visits run from home or a phone seven days a week. Onsite video visits happen at the Visitation Center at 815 N. Palmetto Avenue, behind the jail, and onsite visits are free. The visitation center is a separate building, so do not plan to walk into the main jail lobby for a scheduled onsite visit.
| Visit type | Hours | Location and notes |
|---|---|---|
| Remote video | 8:00 to 11:30 a.m.; 1:15 to 4:30 p.m.; 6:30 to 10:00 p.m., seven days a week | From home or mobile through InmateSales and CPC |
| Onsite video, morning | Visits start 8:15 a.m.; last morning visit 11:30 a.m.; closed noon to 1 p.m. | Visitation Center, 815 N. Palmetto Avenue; free |
| Onsite video, afternoon | 1:15 to 4:30 p.m. | Closed Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays |
To visit, you need an account through CPC. Create one at the kiosk in the jail lobby or online at InmateSales.com. You must add a profile photo and a copy of a driver's license or state ID. All video visits, calls, and messages are monitored around the clock. Schedule a visit at least 24 hours ahead. Weekend and Monday visits must be booked no later than Friday at 5 p.m. A dress code applies, and visitors who break the rules can lose visiting privileges. Federal prisoners held in the jail may be visited only when the arresting federal agency authorizes it.
Note: Onsite visits use the visitation center behind the jail at 815 N. Palmetto Avenue, which is a different address from the main jail at 901 North Orange Avenue.
Mail, Phone, and Money at Clay County Jail
Mail is split into two streams, and sending it to the wrong address can delay or block it. Regular inmate mail goes through a third-party processor in Kentucky to reduce contraband. Legal mail, packages, and publications still go straight to the jail in Green Cove Springs. Do not send legal mail to the Kentucky box. Phone service runs through CPC, and all calls are monitored and recorded. Money deposits go through the lobby kiosk or Government Payment Service, and money cannot be handed to an inmate during a visit.
| Service | Provider and detail |
|---|---|
| Regular mail | Inmate name and ID, Clay County Jail, FL, PO Box 76550, Highland Heights, KY 41076 (third-party processing) |
| Legal mail, packages, publications | Inmate name and ID, Clay County Jail, 901 North Orange Avenue, Green Cove Springs, FL 32043 |
| Phone and video | CPC; buy time at the kiosk, at InmateSales.com, or by phone at 1-877-998-5678; Pin Debit or Prepaid; monitored and recorded |
| Money deposit | Government Payment Service (888) 277-2535, 24 hours; pay location code #5500; facility code 23J; $25 minimum, $100 maximum, 5% fee |
| Lobby kiosk | Clay County Jail lobby, Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. |
Two phone account types exist. A Pin Debit account lets the inmate call any number using purchased time. A Prepaid account funds talk time for one specific number only. For a deposit, you need the inmate name, the inmate number, and the facility code 23J. Direct handoff of money or property during a visit is not allowed, so route funds through the kiosk or the phone service instead.
Booking and Intake at Clay County Jail
Booking is the intake event that follows an arrest. Clay County does not publish a full step-by-step workflow, yet the roster fields and standard Florida practice make the path clear. A person arrested by the Sheriff's Office, a city police agency, or a federal agency is transported to the Clay County Jail for intake. Staff then identify the person, record name and demographics, inventory property, and conduct searches.
Intake continues with fingerprints and a booking photo, then a medical and mental-health screen. Needs found during that screen route into the Jail Medical Unit when required. Staff enter the arrest and charge information and classify the person for housing. The public roster tends to show new bookings quickly. On June 3, 2026, sample rows carried same-day arrest dates and court dates set for the next morning, which means a person can appear before bond is set.
After booking comes a first appearance, an early hearing where a judge reviews the arrest and addresses bond. Bond fields on the roster may start as awaiting bond hearing and later change to a cash, surety, no-bond, or other status. Booking charges are not always the final court charges. The State Attorney reviews the case and decides what to file, so the formal court record can differ from the charge shown at booking.
About the Clay County Jail
The Clay County Jail offers more than holding space. The Sheriff's Office states the jail has a fully staffed Jail Medical Unit managed by a registered nurse, with a physician and a psychiatrist on staff. Inmates have access to phone service, video visitation, commissary, inmate programs, exercise, and library privileges. Communications run through the CPC phone system, with monitored and recorded calls. These are the strongest official facts the Sheriff's Office publishes about daily conditions.
On standards, the Sheriff's Office reports a record of success with the Florida Corrections Accreditation Commission and Florida Model Jail Standards inspections. In plain terms, the jail is measured under Florida jail accreditation and standards frameworks rather than the federal prison system. The page does not claim American Correctional Association accreditation, so the FCAC and FMJS references are the accurate ones to cite here.
One point causes steady confusion, so it is worth stating plainly. The Clay County Jail is not a state prison. After a person is sentenced to a state prison term and received into state custody, that person leaves the county jail and appears in the Florida Department of Corrections system, not on the county roster. The same logic applies to federal and immigration custody, which use their own locators. Florida public-records law keeps much of this information open, and the records you cannot find online can be requested through the Sheriff's Office. For broader records and roster how-to, the jail inmate records guide and the Clay County inmate population overview go deeper.
Custody status can change on short notice. Before you travel to the jail or to the visitation center, confirm the person is still held there and that visiting is open. Registering with VINELink can save a wasted trip, and a quick call to the jail can confirm a current detail.
Florida VINELink is a custody notification portal that many families lean on for release alerts. You can open the Florida VINELink portal to register a phone or email for updates on a specific person.
VINELink complements the live roster because it pushes a notice when a status changes, instead of asking you to keep checking the catalog by hand. It is a steady backup for the moments when the public roster has not yet caught up.
Note: Always confirm a person is still in custody and that visiting hours are open before traveling, since bookings, transfers, and releases can change a record the same day.