The jail opened in the fall of 1974 as a result of the City of Charlottesville and the County of Albemarle deciding to build a new regional jail for housing local prisoners and closing the doors of their outdated jails. The staff from the city and county jails were combined and the name given to the facility was the Albemarle-Charlottesville Joint Security Complex. The name was changed to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail in 1996.