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

The Detention Center

Fresno County Main Jail; Fresno North Annex Jail; Fresno County West Annex Jail

Operated byFresno County Sheriff-Coroner's Office (Custody Services)
County publishes a jail nameYes — the Sheriff's site names the Fresno County Jail and its Main Jail, North Jail and West Annex Jail
Mail address for people in custodyFresno County Jail - 1900, PO Box 96777, Las Vegas, NV 89193
PREA CoordinatorLieutenant Marti Velasco, 1225 M Street, Fresno, CA 93721
Facilities named in the state inspection letterNorth Annex (BSCC 0702), Main Jail (0705), West Annex (0706), all Type II
Rated capacity2,609 beds across 3 facilities

Source: Fresno County Sheriff's Office — Jail: General Information · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

5/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✓Who is in custody
✓Beds and daily population
✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
✓Deaths in custody
✓PREA audits
✗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 Fresno 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
Beds2,609 rated capacity across three facilities (BSCC, data through June 2026): North Annex 1,184, Main Jail 1,129, West Annex 296

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff John Zanoni

Title as publishedSheriff-Coroner
Also serves asCounty Coroner — the office brands itself 'The Fresno County Sheriff-Coroner's Office'
Office address2200 Fresno Street, Fresno, CA 93721
Confirmed byBSCC 2025-2026 comprehensive inspection letter, addressed 'John Zanoni, Sheriff-Coroner', May 6, 2025

Still needed

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

Source: Fresno County Sheriff-Coroner's Office · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Large multi-judge court; per the brief only the Presiding Judge and Assistant Presiding Judge are listed. The court's posted assignments show that bail work runs through Dept. 52, the Presiding Judge's department, which holds the Bond Calendar, Master Calendar and Parole Calendar. Bail schedules are posted at https://www.fresno.courts.ca.gov/divisions/criminal/bail-schedules .

Superior Court of California, County of Fresno — Presiding Judge

Jeff Hamilton

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

Leanne Le Mon

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

Fresno is the only county in this group with a working, current PC 10008 table containing every substantive element the statute requires.
The jail population feed is live: as of 8/22/2026 2:20 PM it showed 2,380 people in custody — 2,072 male, 308 female, 1,952 pre-trial and 428 sentenced. A rated-capacity figure is not published alongside it, so 'capacity' rests on the daily population count.
PREA material posted includes the 2016 agency and facility audit reports, the 2020-21 audit, annual reports for 2017 and 2020, and Sheriff Policy D-360.
Phone service runs through Global Tel Link / ViaPath and commissary deposits through TouchPay and MyCarePack; no rates are published. Commissary prices are described only as 'comparable to convenience store prices', with a $175 weekly purchase cap.
No bail-posting guidance was found on the Sheriff's site; the Jail FAQs cover only package orders and how to find someone who was arrested.
The county's budget site (fresnocountyca.gov) returned HTTP 403 to this session, so the detention budget could not be checked.
The BSCC 2025-2026 comprehensive inspection found noncompliance at the North Annex, including an out-of-date fire suppression preplanning review and Title 24 dormitory square-footage and occupancy findings.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district. The county's own board page is on fresnocountyca.gov, which could not be opened from this session; the county's Legistar system is reachable and lists the five members.

What California law requires

Fresno County posts a death-in-custody page.

Posts 7 of 7

The page is here. The Sheriff-Coroner's Office publishes a single 'In-Custody Deaths' table covering deaths from 2/3/2023 through 8/1/2026, with columns for Date of Death, County, Facility, Location, Race, Gender, Age, Custodial Status, Manner of Death and Means of Death. The custodial agency is identified by the site itself ('The Fresno County Sheriff-Coroner's Office') rather than as a column. Several recent entries show 'Pending' for manner and means. Most deaths are recorded at a 'Local Hospital' or 'Skilled Nursing Facility' rather than inside a jail housing unit.

✓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

71 people have died in the Fresno County jail since 2016.

18 by suicide

30 illness or medical

71 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them61 of 71

Most recent death on the state's record2025-11-15

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 Fresno 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 Fresno 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