Palm Beach County Central Detention Center - CLOSED

The Palm Beach County Central Detention Center — historically called the "Palm Beach County Stockade" and located at 673 Fairgrounds Road in West Palm Beach — is closed and no longer holds inmates. Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office (PBSO) consolidated county detention operations into the Main Detention Center at 3228 Gun Club Road in West Palm Beach and its west-county satellite. If you were looking for a loved one who was previously listed at the Central Detention Center, or you found an older third-party inmate-lookup that still references the Fairgrounds Road address, your person has been transferred to the current PBSO facilities. This guide covers PBSO's Main Detention Center as the current custody location, the visitation and mail rules that now apply, and how to confirm current custody status.

Why the Central Detention Center closed

Palm Beach County's Central Detention Center — commonly called the Stockade — operated for many years as a lower-custody county facility on Fairgrounds Road in West Palm Beach. PBSO consolidated its county detention operations into the Main Detention Center on Gun Club Road (along with the west-county satellite) as part of a facilities consolidation and operational modernization plan. That consolidation moved intake, booking, and housing for most PBSO detainees into the Main Detention Center, and the former Stockade site no longer functions as a jail. Some older listings and third-party inmate-lookup sites still reference the Fairgrounds Road address, so families searching for a loved one who was previously held there should look up their current custody location at the PBSO Main Detention Center.

How to find someone in PBSO custody today

Use PBSO's inmate lookup on pbso.org for current custody information. That search tool covers all people currently in PBSO custody across the Main Detention Center and the West Detention Center. If your loved one has been transferred to Florida DOC state prison after sentencing on a felony, use FL DOC's Corrections Offender Network for state-inmate search. Our guide on how to find someone in jail or prison covers the process more generally.

Current PBSO Main Detention Center visitation

The PBSO Main Detention Center at 3228 Gun Club Road offers visitation with the following schedule:

• Monday through Friday: 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
• Saturday and Sunday: 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Visitation is managed through PBSO's contracted video and visit-management provider. Verify current scheduling, registration process, and any fees through PBSO by calling the Detention Office at (561) 558-2700. Visitors typically must be pre-registered and approved before scheduling any visit; expect a background check. Bring a valid government-issued photo ID for on-site visits and follow PBSO's rules on dress and behavior.

Mail to a current PBSO inmate

Personal mail for PBSO Main Detention Center inmates goes to the Main Detention Center address at 3228 Gun Club Road, PO Box 24716, West Palm Beach, FL 33406, addressed with the inmate's full name and booking number. Confirm the current mail policy on the PBSO website before sending, particularly if PBSO has moved to a scanning-vendor model for personal mail (many Florida county sheriffs have moved in that direction). Legal mail from an attorney or court, clearly marked as legal correspondence, is opened only in the inmate's presence. Our how to send mail to an inmate covers the general format for county jails.

Phone service and deposits at PBSO

Inmate phone service at PBSO runs through Securus Technologies. Family members set up prepaid AdvanceConnect accounts at securustech.net and register the phone numbers the inmate will call. Deposits for commissary and communications accounts are managed through PBSO's contracted vendor; confirm the current deposit vendor and routing on pbso.org before sending. Our overviews of how to send money to an inmate and how to call an inmate cover the general county-jail model.

Court records, emergencies, and reentry

Palm Beach County criminal cases are handled through the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida (felonies) and Palm Beach County Court (misdemeanors and preliminary matters), with case records searchable through the Palm Beach County Clerk of the Circuit Court website. Bond decisions in Florida can be handled through commercial surety with a licensed Florida bail bondsman (typically for a 10 percent non-refundable premium), through cash bond, or, in some cases, on personal recognizance. If your loved one has been arrested, look them up on the PBSO inmate search and use the Clerk's site to check case status.

For urgent family emergencies such as a death, serious illness, or birth, call PBSO at (561) 688-4400 with the inmate's name and booking number and ask that a chaplain or unit staff relay the message.

Avoiding scams

Third-party sites sometimes claim to offer inmate locate services, cheaper phone calls, or expedited deposits for a fee. PBSO's inmate search, Securus for calls, and PBSO's contracted deposit vendor are the authoritative and only fully reliable channels. Paying an unfamiliar site for something PBSO or its named vendors provide directly is a common way families lose money for something the system provides free or through named vendors. Sites that still show "Palm Beach County Central Detention Center" as an active facility are outdated — the current PBSO custody address is 3228 Gun Club Road.

Why a closed jail still appears in searches and paperwork

The Sheriff's Office still lists the Central Detention Center as part of its inmate management bureau, marked as currently closed. That is why the name keeps surfacing: it remains a real, named facility in the agency's own structure, and in every court file, booking record and item of correspondence generated while it was operating. Seeing it does not mean the information is current.

The services provided here are a historical booking and detention record, a name still carried in the bureau's official facility list and an address that no longer accepts mail, money or visitors. That is a clinical remit rather than a custodial one — people are here because of a medical or behavioural health need, not because this is where they are held.

If you are trying to reach someone in custody, these are the facilities that actually hold people:

• Palm Beach County Main Detention Center, West Palm Beach
• Palm Beach County West Detention Center, Belle Glade

Someone taken to hospital from one of those facilities remains in custody the whole time, and remains booked there. So the place to ask about them is the facility holding them, not the hospital — the hospital will not confirm a patient in custody, and the custody record does not move when the person does.

The two Palm Beach County jails that are open

Because this record is not itself a custody facility, the numbers worth knowing belong to the two that are. The most recent federal jail census, covering 2019, counted them separately:

• Palm Beach County Main Detention Center, West Palm Beach — a rated and design capacity of 2,166, a peak population of 1,484
• Palm Beach County West Detention Center, Belle Glade — a rated and design capacity of 998, a peak population of 585

The Sheriff's Office describes its inmate management bureau as consisting of the Main Detention Center, the West Detention Center and the Central Detention Center, with Central currently closed. So anyone in Palm Beach County custody today is at one of the first two.

Those are census figures for a single reporting year and are now several years old, so treat them as the scale of each facility rather than a current count. Neither figure describes this record — this address is the hospital, and it holds no one on its own authority.

The Central Detention Center is closed

the Palm Beach County Central Detention Center was deactivated in and is listed by the Sheriff's Office as currently closed and no longer holds anyone. If you are looking for a person who was once held here, they were transferred to another institution — there is no one at this address to call, and no visiting schedule to book.

The most important thing to understand is that a closure does not shorten anyone's sentence. The department states plainly that institution closures do not result in early releases; people are moved to other facilities matching their housing and custody needs. So a closure is a change of address, not a change of release date.

To find where someone went, use the department's online inmate locator rather than ringing this facility. A transfer shows up there first, and it is the only authoritative answer. If the search does not find them, the department's Identification Unit can help — have a date of birth ready, especially for a common name.

How the Palm Beach County Central Detention Center is inspected

Florida county and municipal detention facilities are inspected against the Florida Model Jail Standards, and the schedule is more demanding than most people assume: a facility must be inspected at least twice a year, with the two inspections at least 120 days apart. The requirement comes from Florida Statute 951.23.

• One inspection covers compliance with all of the jail standards.
• The other covers serious violations only — and it must be unannounced, with no advance notice to the facility.

The people doing it have to be certified: both Jail Inspectors and Jail Medical Inspectors must hold certification to inspect, and must recertify every four years. The current standards took effect on 1 January 2025.

This matters more than most oversight machinery, because an inspection report is a document you can ask for. If you have a concern about conditions that the jail itself will not address — sanitation, medical access, overcrowding, safety — asking whether the facility's most recent inspection raised it, and requesting that report, is a concrete step that carries more weight than a phone complaint. Reports are generally public records.

How to find someone in this department's custody

The department's official search tool is the Sheriff's Office inmate information pages, at www.pbso.org/inside-pbso/corrections/general. Because the Central Detention Center is closed, a search that returns nothing for this facility is expected rather than an error. Check the Sheriff's Office listing for the Main Detention Center in West Palm Beach and the West Detention Center in Belle Glade instead, and treat any older paperwork naming Central as a historical record rather than a current address.

Your first steps

If you thought your loved one was at the Palm Beach County Central Detention Center, focus first on the essentials: use the PBSO inmate search on pbso.org to confirm current custody location (Main Detention Center at 3228 Gun Club Road or the West Detention Center satellite), note the booking number, register with the current visitation vendor, fund an initial deposit for canteen basics through PBSO's contracted vendor, register your phone number with Securus for calls, and mail to the Main Detention Center address with legal mail clearly marked. Look up the case number on the Palm Beach County Clerk of the Circuit Court and, if bond is set, contact a licensed Florida bail bondsman. If your loved one is transferred to FL DOC state prison after sentencing, our guides on life after prison, finding work after prison, and applying for SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF after release cover what comes next.

Why sites still show the closed Central Detention Center

Search engines and third-party inmate-lookup aggregators cache old jail information for years, and Palm Beach County's now-closed Central Detention Center is one of the more persistent examples. Sites like Vinelink, JailExchange, InmateAid, and many state-court inmate-search aggregators may still list "Palm Beach County Central Detention Center" or reference 673 Fairgrounds Road as an active address. These are outdated listings and do not reflect current PBSO operations. When you see the Central Detention Center referenced in an inmate-search result, treat the individual record's booking date as your cue: any booking after PBSO's consolidation was made into the Main Detention Center at 3228 Gun Club Road, not the closed Stockade.

Palm Beach County West Detention Center satellite

In addition to the Main Detention Center, PBSO operates a West Detention Center as a satellite facility for county detainees in the west-county region. The sheriff's inmate lookup covers both facilities, but visiting rules, mail routing, and deposit procedures may differ between Main and West. If PBSO's inmate search shows your loved one at the West Detention Center rather than the Main, verify the specific visitation address and hours for the West location on the PBSO website before you drive to Gun Club Road — they are two separate physical sites.

Getting to the Main Detention Center at Gun Club Road

The PBSO Main Detention Center at 3228 Gun Club Road sits in a portion of West Palm Beach south of Belvedere Road, off Australian Avenue and near the Palm Beach County Government Center West campus. From I-95, take the Belvedere Road exit and head west. Parking is available near the visitor entrance. Bring only a valid photo ID and any small amount of change for vending machines; leave phones, cameras, and everything else in the vehicle. Because visiting slots book up in the busiest weekend windows, arriving 20 to 30 minutes ahead of your scheduled slot avoids losing it to processing delays.

Verifying an outdated inmate search result

If a search engine result or a third-party inmate-lookup site still points you to the closed Central Detention Center, the fastest way to verify current custody is a direct call to the PBSO Detention Office at (561) 558-2700 with the person's full legal name and date of birth. Detention staff can confirm whether the person is currently in PBSO custody at the Main Detention Center or the West Detention Center, provide the current booking number, and flag whether the person has been released, transferred to Florida DOC, or handed off to another agency (US Marshals Service for federal cases, etc.). This one call typically resolves the confusion faster than working through search-engine results, and it also produces the specific booking number and current custody address you need for subsequent mail, visits, and deposits.