The Detention Center
Colusa County Jail; replacement facility named Colusa County Detention and Treatment Facility
- Operated byColusa County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes a jail pageYes — https://www.countyofcolusaca.gov/158/Jail, titled 'Jail | Colusa County, CA - Official Website'
- Original jailBuilt 1962
- Replacement facilityColusa County Detention and Treatment Facility, built on the existing Sheriff's Office property in Colusa
- What was triedcountyofcolusaca.gov could not be opened directly — its robots.txt was unreachable on every attempt; page existence and titles confirmed through search results
- Rated capacity188 beds across 2 facilities
Source: Corrections1 — Calif. county gets $20M to replace 63-year-old jail · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1962 (original jail)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for by$20 million state grant from the $500 million authorized by Senate Bill 863, for the replacement facility
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Colusa County Detention and Treatment Facility — replacement project on the Sheriff's Office property; contractor Broward Builders lists a $30 million design-build project value; occupancy was originally planned for summer or fall 2019.
The Sheriff
Sheriff Joe Garofalo
- Title as publishedSheriff — county budget portal publishes the 'Sheriff-Coroner Office'
- Also serves asCounty Coroner
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Colusa County — Recommended Budget, Sheriff (county OpenGov portal) · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Two-judge court; the court's 'Officers of the Court' listing names no commissioner.
Superior Court of California, County of Colusa — Presiding Judge
- Brendan Michael Farrell
- 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 →
Notes on the record
- Budget is recorded 'yes' on the county's own OpenGov budget portal for the Sheriff-Coroner Office, which references a Jail Budget; detention is not broken out as a standalone line item.
- The county's own budget narrative names 'Joe Garofalo, Sheriff' and describes the jail security control system replacement ($425,000) and the new detention and treatment facility.
- All jail roster results returned were third-party commercial sites, not a county-published roster.
- countyofcolusaca.gov could not be fetched at any point; findings for that domain rest on search-result titles and URLs rather than opened pages, and are marked as such.
- Board of Supervisors elected by district (five districts). County site is not directly retrievable; URL confirmed through search results.
What California law requires
We could not find a death-in-custody page for Colusa County.
No page foundNo in-custody death reporting page located. Web-searched the countyofcolusaca.gov domain for 'PC 10008', 'AB 2761' and 'in custody death'; the Sheriff's section returned only https://www.countyofcolusaca.gov/156/Sheriff, /158/Jail, /345/Investigations, /175/Records, /360/Sheriffs-Instructions and /824/Documents, none of them a custodial-death page. Direct fetches of countyofcolusaca.gov failed because its robots.txt was unreachable. 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.
The record
1 people have died in the Colusa County jail since 2019.
Deaths: Texas Justice Initiative, the cleaned copy of the Texas Attorney General’s custodial death reports — the state’s own public index carries no cause of death and has not been refreshed since August 2025. Population: Texas Commission on Jail Standards monthly report. Counted, not estimated.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Colusa 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.
- Find your polling place and check your registration →
- Your county elections office →
- Register to vote in California →
The county elections office runs the polling place in Colusa 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