Tom Vaughn, the Republican candidate for Marion County Sheriff, says the county's jail has deep structural and operational problems that go well beyond a staffing shortage — pointing to underused body scanners, poorly trained deputies, and 48 inmate deaths recorded over the last nine years as evidence the facility needs to be restructured.
Vaughn, who currently serves as Southport Police Chief, laid out his critique of the Marion County Adult Detention Center in comments reported by WIBC, saying the jail lacks good structure and policies and is short-staffed. According to Vaughn, the facility is not always using its body scanners, and deputies are not receiving proper training after graduating from the academy. He said the jail is putting people in positions in a way that causes chaos, and that it needs to be restructured.
Vaughn began his law enforcement career with the Marion County Sheriff's Office in 1997 before becoming chief of the Southport Police Department in 2014, per the same WIBC report. He said he wants the best candidate to clean up the sheriff's office, framing his campaign around fixing what he describes as entrenched dysfunction inside the jail's day-to-day operations.
A Late Entry to a Rare Open-Seat Race
Vaughn's path to the general election ballot was unusual. He joined the race in July after being selected by Marion County Republican Party leadership, since no Republican candidates had filed to run in the May primary, according to a voter guide from WFYI. He now faces Democrat Kelvis Williams, who secured his party's nomination in May by winning nearly 55% of the primary vote against opponent Gregory Patrick, WFYI reported.
Williams brings more than 40 years of law enforcement experience to the race, per WIBC, having served 25 years with the Indiana State Police before joining the Marion County Sheriff's Office in 2009. He now serves as Deputy Chief of the Homeland Security Division. The WFYI voter guide frames the matchup as a contrast between Vaughn's emphasis on internal facility mismanagement and Williams' position as a continuity candidate backed by local Democratic leadership.
The race is open because current Sheriff Kerry Forestal is term-limited under Article 6, Section 2 of the Indiana Constitution, which caps county sheriffs at eight years of service in any 12-year period. Forestal announced in December 2025 that he's running as a Democrat for Indiana Senate District 31 rather than seeking another local office, as reported by the Indiana Lawyer. Whoever wins in November will take over an office managing the detention operations for Indiana's most populous county, with Marion County's population exceeding 992,000 residents as of 2026, according to WFYI.
A Modern Facility Still Facing Old Problems
The jail at the center of Vaughn's criticism isn't the aging downtown lockup many longtime Indianapolis residents remember. The $570 million to $600 million Community Justice Campus opened in the Twin Aire neighborhood in May 2022, featuring a 2,700-bed main Adult Detention Center and 300 specialty beds meant to replace the county's old downtown facility, according to WFYI's public affairs coverage. The original downtown jail, built in 1962, was fully demolished in January 2025 once operations had completely shifted to the new campus.
Despite the new building, the office has continued to grapple with capacity and operational strain. In January, outgoing Sheriff Forestal warned that proposed state bail policy changes could further stress the Adult Detention Center, which was already operating at full capacity, Axios reported. Beyond the staffing and safety concerns Vaughn has raised, WFYI notes that jail overcrowding and the sheriff's office policy on 48-hour holds for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees have become central policy flashpoints in the campaign.
Hoodline has previously reported on the jail's ICE holds, and has also covered incidents inside the facility involving drug smuggling and inmate violence. Those recurring issues — overcrowding, contraband, and safety inside the walls of a facility built just four years ago — form the backdrop against which Vaughn is now making his case to voters that the jail's problems are less about infrastructure than about how it's being run.
