Del Norte County, California — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Del Norte County Jail

Operated byDel Norte County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameYes — 'Del Norte County Jail' on the Sheriff's Jail page
Name used by the stateDel Norte County Detention Facility, BSCC #0640, Type II
Jail address650 Fifth Street, Crescent City, CA 95531
What the county's jail page containsOnly three ways to deposit money into an inmate account (Access Corrections online, phone, lobby kiosk)
Rated capacity146 beds

Source: Del Norte County Sheriff's Office — Jail · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

1/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗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 Del Norte 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
Beds146 rated capacity (BSCC, data through June 2026)

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Garrett Scott

Title on the county siteSheriff
Title in the state inspection letterSheriff-Coroner
Also serves asCounty Coroner
Office address650 Fifth Street, Crescent City, CA 95531

Still needed

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

Source: Del Norte County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Three-department court. The posted judicial assignments name two judges and one commissioner; Dept. 3 is staffed by Commissioner Jones and/or an assigned judge. The assignment page still links a '2023 Department Schedule'.

Superior Court of California, County of Del Norte — Presiding Judge

Darren McElfresh

Superior Court of California, County of Del Norte — Judges and Commissioners

Darren McElfresh (Dept. 1)
Karen Olson (Dept. 2)
Commissioner Kevin Brian Jones (Dept. 3)

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

The Sheriff's Office links a statewide VINE search (https://vinelink.vineapps.com/search/CA/Person) rather than publishing a roster of who is in custody; VINE requires a name and is operated by a third party, so 'roster' is recorded as no.
The county's Auditor-Controller links an interactive 'Online Budget Lookup' application at https://budget.dnco.org/ ; it is a query tool and no published detention or corrections budget document was found, so 'budget' is recorded as no.
Call and arrest logs are published through a third-party portal at https://delnorte.citizenrims.com/ .
The BSCC 2025-2026 comprehensive inspection (facility inspected July 23, 2025) found noncompliance with Title 15 §1027 (staffing), §1027.5(b) (safety checks not within the required 60 minutes) and §1056 (use of the sobering cell).
The Sheriff's Office also runs animal services, civil process, court security and countywide emergency communications.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district; regular meetings the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month.

What California law requires

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

No page found

No PC 10008 / AB 2761 page was found on the county's website. Checked: https://www.co.del-norte.ca.us/departments/Sheriff (full navigation), https://www.co.del-norte.ca.us/departments/Sheriff/Jail , https://www.co.del-norte.ca.us/departments/Sheriff/Policies (page is empty of content), https://www.co.del-norte.ca.us/departments/Sheriff/CustodyDeaths (soft 404, re-renders the Sheriff landing page), the county sitemap at https://www.co.del-norte.ca.us/sitemap.xml (819 URLs, none matching custody, death, jail or inmate beyond /Jail), and the county search at https://www.co.del-norte.ca.us/search (returns a records-search page for any query). The Sheriff's whole online custody presence is one money-deposit page. 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

2 people have died in the Del Norte County jail since 2019.

1 by suicide

0 illness or medical

2 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them1 of 2

Most recent death on the state's record2025-12-04

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 Del Norte 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 Del Norte 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