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

The Detention Center

Humboldt County Correctional Facility (HCCF)

Operated byHumboldt County Sheriff's Office, Custody Services Division
County publishes a jail nameYes — Humboldt County Correctional Facility
SizeApproximately 155,000 square feet over six floors, adjacent to the county courthouse
Board rated capacity417 beds as published by the county; BSCC records 407
Staffing109 correctional officers, the largest division in the Sheriff's Office
Medical and dental careContracted to Wellpath, 24 hours on site
AddressesCorrectional facility 826 4th Street, Eureka; visiting lobby 901 5th Street, Eureka
Rated capacity407 beds

Source: Humboldt County Sheriff's Office — Custody Services Division · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

6/10Partial

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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Humboldt 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
Beds417 board rated capacity as published by the county; 407 rated capacity per BSCC data through June 2026

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff William F. Honsal

Also listed asWilliam (Billy) Honsal
Also serves asCounty Coroner — the Coroner-Public Administrator Bureau is a division of the Sheriff's Office
And asPublic Administrator
Office address826 Fourth Street, Eureka, CA 95501

Still needed

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

Source: Humboldt County Sheriff's Office — Meet the Sheriff · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

The court does not post a named judicial-assignment roster; the Presiding Judge and Assistant Presiding Judge are taken from the court's own June 2, 2026 public notice on In re Kowalczyk and pre-trial release, which is signed by both plus the Court Executive Officer. That notice is itself the court's public explanation of how bail and pre-trial detention are decided in Humboldt County.

Superior Court of California, County of Humboldt — Presiding Judge

Kelly L. Neel

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

Timothy A. Canning

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

Humboldt publishes the most of any county in this group: a named jail, a bed count, daily jail reports, a bail page, a budget and an AB 2761 page.
The jail reports page posts PDFs every morning — booking sheet, releases, 'must go' lists, DA list and an alphabetical population profile — which together function as a daily roster and daily population count.
The county's own count of 417 beds and the BSCC rated capacity of 407 do not match; both are recorded rather than reconciled.
No PREA audit result was found. The Sheriff's transparency section carries SB 978 policies, AB 481 military equipment, SB 1421 / AB 748 personnel investigations and AB 2761, but nothing on PREA.
The bail page explains cash bail (payable to 'Humboldt Superior Court') and bail bonds but publishes no schedule of amounts; it also warns that the facility will never call to collect a bail payment.
Commissary and money-transfer vendors are named (Access Secure Deposits, Access Securepak) but no rates are published.
The BSCC 2025-2026 comprehensive inspection (facility inspected July 22, 2025) identified no items of noncompliance with Title 15 or Title 24.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district; offices in Room 111 of the courthouse at 825 5th Street, Eureka.

What California law requires

Humboldt County posts a death-in-custody page.

Posts 7 of 7

The page is here. The Sheriff's Office publishes an 'AB 2761 Information / Jail Mortality Reporting' page under its Transparency section, quoting the statute and linking the bill text. Deaths are grouped by year with columns for Date of Death, Facility, Manner of Death, Means of Death, Location, Custody Status, Age, Gender and Race; the custodial agency and county are identified by the page's placement on the county's own Sheriff's Office site rather than as columns. The most recent entry, 07/21/26, shows manner and means as 'Pending information from medical examiner'. Entries appear for 2026, 2024 and 2023.

✓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

6 people have died in the Humboldt County jail since 2016.

2 by suicide

4 illness or medical

6 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them4 of 6

Most recent death on the state's record2024-11-22

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 Humboldt 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 Humboldt 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