Cherokee County Jail Mugshots Overview
The Cherokee County Sheriff's Office public roster displays booking photos for people listed on the roster. On the current inmate roster inspected May 27, 2026, visible roster cards included a mugshot thumbnail, name, booking number, booking date, charges, and a profile link. The individual profile page displayed a larger front-facing booking photo with booking number, age, gender, race, address field, arresting agency, booking date, and charges. The roster is run by the sheriff's office under Sheriff Jeff Shaver for the Cherokee County Detention Center, not by a commercial mugshot publisher.
The current roster covers people presently listed in the detention center. The released-inmate roster covers people released from the Cherokee County Detention Center within the last 48 hours, and the inspected release roster also showed mugshot thumbnails, booking numbers, release dates, booking dates, charges, and profile links. The official material did not state that historical mugshots remain publicly searchable after the 48-hour release window, and it did not identify a separate local mugshot archive. For the custody and booking fields behind the photo, use jail inmate records. For the court result after the arrest, use court records after jail arrest.
Where to Find Cherokee County Booking Photos
The first place to look is the official sheriff roster, not a third-party image site. The Cherokee County current inmate roster is the documented source for current detention center booking photos.
The current roster screenshot confirms the roster-card pattern: photo thumbnail, booking number, booking date, charge text, and a link to the full profile.
- Open the sheriff's roster chooser or go directly to the current inmate roster.
- Use the roster's name search or sort controls to locate the person by last name or booking order.
- Open the profile link to view the larger booking photo and the profile fields published with it.
- If the person is not on the current roster, check the 48-hour release roster for a recent release.
- If neither roster lists the person, call the Detention Center at (256) 927-6435 or the Sheriff's Office at (256) 927-3365 before assuming no booking record exists.
- For a photo not available online, use the sheriff's records channel during normal business hours and describe the booking date, name, and arresting agency as specifically as possible.
The sheriff's official app, Cherokee County AL Sheriff, is a secondary sheriff-controlled access channel for public information, alerts, press releases, most wanted, sex offenders, crime tips, contact messages, and inmate information. The research confirmed the web roster and profile photo behavior, but did not confirm a broader app-only booking-photo archive.
What a Cherokee County Booking Photo Shows
A Cherokee County booking photo is presented as part of a booking profile, so it should be read with the surrounding fields rather than as a standalone criminal-history record. The inspected profile used one front-facing booking photo. It did not show full date of birth, Social Security number, housing unit, cell or pod location, medical information, attorney information, victim information, court date, warrant number, or case number.
The sample inmate profile capture documented the field set shown with a booking photo on an individual roster profile.
The sample profile also carried the sheriff's warning that charges and bail amounts may change after court appearances and that detention staff should be contacted for current bail, charges, and case numbers.
| Field | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Booking Photo | One public front-facing booking image on the profile, with thumbnails on roster summaries while the entry is visible. |
| Name | Name formatting in the roster summary and profile title. |
| Booking Number | A local numeric booking identifier for the custody event. |
| Demographics | Age, single-letter gender, single-letter race, and a public address or community field as entered in the roster system. |
| Arresting Agency | The agency that brought or charged the person; the inspected sample showed Centre Police Department with an agency identifier. |
| Booking Date | Date and time of entry into the detention center roster system. |
| Release Date | Shown on released-roster summaries when the person is in the 48-hour release list. |
| Charges | Plain-text booking or arrest charge lines. These may differ from later court filings. |
Are Cherokee County Jail Mugshots Public Record?
Cherokee County publishes booking photos on its official roster entries, but Alabama law does not appear in the research as a special statute requiring all mugshots to be published online. The better reading is that booking photos are law-enforcement or jail records analyzed under Alabama's general public-records framework and any applicable exceptions. Alabama's baseline favors inspection and copying of public writings, but agencies may restrict records covered by juvenile confidentiality, expungement, sealed-court access, pending-investigation limits, medical privacy, mental-health confidentiality, victim protection, or other statutes.
Key Statutes:
Ala. Code § 36-12-40 gives Alabama citizens the right to inspect and copy public writings except where another statute provides otherwise.
Ala. Code § 41-13-1 broadly defines public records as materials made or received by public officers in public business.
Ala. Code § 15-27-2 and § 15-27-3 govern eligibility and petition requirements for expungement of certain criminal records.
How Long a Mugshot Stays on the Roster
The official roster chooser says the released list shows all persons released from the detention center within the last 48 hours. That means a booking photo may remain visible during that short release-window when the released entry is included. The research did not locate an official Cherokee County policy stating whether historical booking photos remain available after that 48-hour window, whether prior booking photos are retained internally, or whether old photos can be searched by the public after removal from the live roster.
The official 48-hour release roster is the short-window source for recent exits from the detention center.
After the 48-hour release window, the court record, sheriff records request process, or state/federal locator may be more useful depending on whether the person was released, transferred, sentenced, or held by another agency.
What is and isn't public: Public roster entries can show the photo, name, booking number, booking date, release date when applicable, charges, age, gender, race, address field, and arresting agency. Public entries do not show full DOB, SSN, medical or mental-health information, exact housing unit, attorney information, victim information, or every old booking photo.
How to Request a Cherokee County Booking Photo
Start with the current roster and 48-hour release roster because those are the documented public photo locations. If the person is no longer listed, call the Cherokee County Detention Center at (256) 927-6435 or the Sheriff's Office at (256) 927-3365. The sheriff FAQ says incident and offense reports can be obtained at the Sheriff's Office during normal business hours. The sheriff's address is 110 Cedar Bluff Road, Centre, AL 35960, with administrative office hours listed as Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
A practical request should identify the person by full name, approximate booking date, arresting agency if known, and booking number if already captured from the roster. Ask whether the booking photo is releasable under Alabama public-records law and whether a written request, appointment, copy fee, or ID is required. The research did not locate a sheriff-published booking-photo fee schedule, guaranteed turnaround time, or special mugshot request form, so those details should be verified with the Sheriff's Office rather than assumed.
Mugshot Removal and Sealed Records
The Cherokee County Sheriff's Office did not publish a separate mugshot-removal policy in the research. The documented legal route is record clearing through the court, not payment to a commercial mugshot site. Alabama's expungement process is controlled by Title 15, Chapter 27, and ALEA's expungement material says a petitioner generally needs a certified ALEA criminal history record before filing in the circuit court where the charge was filed. The ALEA expungement kit specifically treats booking or arrest photos as criminal-justice agency records that may be affected by an expungement order.
If a Cherokee County charge was dismissed, no-billed, resolved in a way that may qualify, or otherwise became eligible, the person should ask the court or attorney handling the expungement how the order applies to the sheriff's roster, the court's State Court Information System references, and agency files. Some criminal-justice agencies may retain limited investigative files or logs after expungement, but dissemination for non-criminal-justice purposes is restricted after the order. The court-record path for sealing and expunging an arrest record is explained with the charge status material on court records after jail arrest.
Federal and State Booking Photos
The Cherokee County Detention Center can house people for the U.S. Marshal Service, but that does not make the county roster a federal prison mugshot system. A federal pretrial detainee may be physically held at the county jail and appear on the local roster if accepted there. A sentenced federal prisoner is searched through the Federal Bureau of Prisons locator after BOP custody begins, and BOP's public locator fields do not work like a county booking-photo gallery.
ADOC is also separate. If a person was sentenced and transferred from Cherokee County to the Alabama Department of Corrections, use the ADOC inmate search rather than the county roster. ADOC profiles and custody rules describe sentenced prison custody, not local bond amounts or Cherokee County booking photos. Federal agencies and ICE do not publish routine county-style mugshot galleries for public lookup. Use official locators and agency contacts, and avoid commercial mugshot sites when trying to verify a public record.