Contra Costa County, California — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Martinez Detention Facility; Marsh Creek Detention Facility; West County Detention Facility; West County Re-Entry Facility

Operated byContra Costa County Office of the Sheriff
County publishes a jail nameCould not be verified — every county-controlled sheriff URL returned HTTP 403 to this session
Facilities named in the state inspection letterMartinez Detention Facility (BSCC 0440, Type II), Marsh Creek Detention Facility (0460), West County Detention Facility (0470)
Fourth facility on the BSCC open-facility listWest County Re-Entry Facility (0475, Type II)
What was triedhttps://www.cocosheriff.org/ ; https://www.contracosta.ca.gov/6738/Sheriff ; https://www.contracosta.ca.gov/7437/Contra-Costa-County-Sheriff ; https://www.cchealth.org/detention — all returned HTTP 403 Access Denied
Rated capacity1,989 beds across 4 facilities

Source: BSCC — 2025-2026 Comprehensive Inspection, Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office · 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 Contra Costa 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 builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds1,989 rated capacity across four facilities (BSCC, data through June 2026): Martinez Detention Facility 646, Marsh Creek Detention Facility 248, West County Detention Facility 1,055, West County Re-Entry Facility 40

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff David Livingston

Title as publishedSheriff-Coroner
Also serves asCounty Coroner — the same office runs the jails and determines cause of death
Office address651 Pine Street, 7th Floor, Martinez, CA 94553
Confirmed byBSCC 2025-2026 comprehensive inspection letter, addressed 'David Livingston, Sheriff-Coroner', November 12, 2025

Still needed

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

Source: California State Sheriffs' Association — Sheriff's Directory · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Large multi-judge court. The court's own organizational chart, effective May 11, 2026, records 38 judges and 4 commissioners; per the brief only the Presiding Judge and Assistant Presiding Judge are listed. Criminal arraignment and bail work is handled out of the Martinez, Richmond, Pittsburg and Walnut Creek branches.

Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa — Presiding Judge

Christopher R. Bowen

Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa — Assistant Presiding Judge

Joni T. Hiramoto

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

Every check is marked 'no' because the county's sheriff domain (cocosheriff.org, Akamai-fronted) and the county health department domain (cchealth.org) returned HTTP 403 to this session on every path tried. These are unverified, not verified absences.
Sheriff-Coroner David Livingston runs both the jails and the Coroner's Office.
BSCC rated capacity is published by the state, not by the county: https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/RC-of-Type-II-III-IV-Local-Adult-Detention-Facilities-Dec-2006-through-June-2026-for-web-as-of-7.28.26.xlsx
The BSCC 2025-2026 comprehensive inspection found items of noncompliance at the Martinez Detention Facility, including safety checks in safety cells, sobering cells and under restraint devices not 'performed at random intervals', and the 10-hour out-of-cell time requirement.
The county's Board of Supervisors pages and Legistar agenda system are reachable and current; only the law-enforcement domains are not.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district (Gioia, Andersen, Burgis, Carlson, Scales-Preston).

What California law requires

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

No page found

No PC 10008 / AB 2761 page could be opened. The Office of the Sheriff's website is the only place the county points to for custody information, and it refused this session: https://www.cocosheriff.org/ , https://www.cocosheriff.org/robots.txt , https://www.cocosheriff.org/sitemap.xml , https://www.contracosta.ca.gov/6738/Sheriff (redirects to cocosheriff.org), https://www.contracosta.ca.gov/7437/Contra-Costa-County-Sheriff (redirects to cocosheriff.org) and https://www.cchealth.org/detention all returned HTTP 403 Access Denied. The county's own site map (https://www.contracosta.ca.gov/Sitemap) carries no jail, detention or in-custody-death page of its own. This is an access failure on this end, not a finding that the county publishes nothing. 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

19 people have died in the Contra Costa County jail since 2016.

8 by suicide

2 illness or medical

19 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them18 of 19

Most recent death on the state's record2024-08-26

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 Contra Costa 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 Contra Costa 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