Built in 1867, and closed in 1977, the building is now a part of the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives, housing part of the museum and all of its storage, as well as the Regional archives reading room and storage.

Even the nearest hospital was outside town and in 1882, a sick man was housed at the jail after being arrested as a "vagrant".

The jail's third and final hanging occurred in 1946 when Walter Zabalotny was executed for the murder of Alice Campbell while in the commission of a robbery.

[2] Before renovations began on the new Peel Heritage Complex, the grounds were searched for any bodies that may have been interred there.

[3] The Brampton Jail's most notorious inmate was Huey Newton, an American co-founder of the Black Panther Party, who was held there in 1977 while awaiting extradition to the United States for murder.