Alpine County, California — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

None — Alpine County does not operate a jail

Operated byNot applicable
County jailNone operated by Alpine County
Statewide contextPPIC: 56 of 58 California counties have at least one long-term detention facility
What was triedhttps://www.alpinecountyca.gov/204/Sheriff and https://www.alpinecountyca.gov/ — both blocked by robots.txt; no county jail page located in search
What the state reportsThe Board of State and Community Corrections lists no rated jail capacity for this county. People arrested here are held somewhere else.

Source: Public Policy Institute of California — California's County Jails · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

0/10Closed

✗The jail is named — not published
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
✗Deaths in custody — not published
✗PREA audits — not published
✗Independent inspection — not published
✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
✗How to post bond — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Alpine County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-08-23. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNo county jail
Original costNo county jail
Paid for byNo county jail
BedsNo county jail

Since then

No county jail

The Sheriff

Sheriff Tom Minder

StatusSitting sheriff; retiring effective November 1, 2026
SuccessorUndersheriff Taylor Green, appointed by the Board of Supervisors under Government Code section 25304, effective November 2, 2026
Also serves asNot confirmed — the county website could not be retrieved

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: South Tahoe Now — New sheriff announced for Alpine County (August 18, 2026) · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Alpine is California's least populous county. The court's homepage lists only a Presiding Judge and an Assistant Presiding Judge; no commissioner is listed.

Superior Court of California, County of Alpine — Presiding Judge

Richard D. Meyer

Superior Court of California, County of Alpine — Assistant Presiding Judge

Scott W. Souers

Still needed

The county's bond schedule
Share of the jail population held pretrial
Median time from booking to first appearance

Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-23

The County Commissioners

They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.

What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
The boardBoard of County Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Confirmed as one of the two California counties without a jail, consistent with the brief; PPIC reports 56 of 58 counties operate at least one long-term facility.
Every transparency check is recorded 'no' because the county operates no jail and its website could not be retrieved (robots.txt).
Sheriff transition in progress: Tom Minder retires November 1, 2026; Taylor Green takes office November 2, 2026.
Board of Supervisors elected by district (five districts). County site is blocked by robots.txt; URLs below are from search results and were not opened directly.

What California law requires

We could not find a death-in-custody page for Alpine County.

No page found

No in-custody death reporting page located. Searched https://www.alpinecountyca.gov/204/Sheriff, https://www.alpinecountyca.gov/, https://www.alpinecountyca.gov/Directory/Home/DepartmentListing?DID=17 (county site blocked by robots.txt) and ran web searches for 'AB 2761', 'PC 10008', 'in-custody death' and 'custodial death' against the alpinecountyca.gov domain. Alpine County operates no jail, so the custodial-death posting duty would arise only for deaths in its own temporary custody. A page may exist somewhere we did not look. If you know of one, tell us and we will correct this.

—The agency with custodial responsibility
—The county where the death occurred
—The facility — and where inside it
—Race, gender and age
—The date of death
—Custodial status — awaiting arraignment, awaiting trial, or incarcerated
—Manner and means of death

California Penal Code § 10008, enacted by AB 2761 and in force since January 2023, requires the agency with custodial responsibility to post these seven items on its own website within ten days of a death in custody, and to update them within thirty days if the facts change. California is the only state in the country with this duty. Checked 2026-08-23. This records what is published, nothing more.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Alpine County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).

How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?

Your VOTE is POWERFUL.

The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.

The sheriff is on your ballot

The county elections office runs the polling place in Alpine County and prints the ballot the sheriff’s name is on. Links from the California Secretary of State and vote.gov.

Names verified 2026-08-23 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered