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

The Detention Center

Lerdo Detention Complex (Lerdo Pre-Trial Facility, Lerdo Justice Facility, Lerdo Max/Med/Min), Central Receiving Facility, Metro Court Holding, plus receiving centers at Mojave and Ridgecrest

Operated byKern County Sheriff's Office, Detentions Bureau
County publishes jail namesYes — the Detentions Bureau page names the facilities
Average daily population publishedApproximately 1,700
New arrests per yearApproximately 30,000
Primary reception centreCentral Receiving Facility
Metro Court HoldingCurrently not housing any incarcerated persons; used only as a court holding facility
Sheriff's Office address1350 Norris Rd., Bakersfield, CA 93308
Rated capacity3,624 beds across 5 facilities

Source: Kern County Sheriff's Office — Detentions Bureau · 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
✗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 Kern 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
Beds3,624 in the state rated capacity file across five facilities (Lerdo Pre-Trial 1,336; Lerdo Minimum 792; Kern County Justice Facility 796; Lerdo Maximum/Medium 408; Central Receiving Facility 292). Kern publishes an average daily population of approximately 1,700 but no bed count.

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Donny Youngblood

Title as publishedSheriff/Coroner/Public Administrator
Also serves asCounty Coroner — the Sheriff's Office runs a Coroner/Public Administrator Division
First elected2006
CareerJoined the Kern County Sheriff's Office in 1972 as a Correctional Officer at the Lerdo Facility

Still needed

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

Source: Kern County Sheriff's Office — Sheriffs · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Large court. Only the Presiding Judge, Assistant Presiding Judge and the departments that carry arraignments and the master felony calendar are listed here; the court's judicial-officers page lists every department in Bakersfield, the Juvenile Justice Center, Traffic Court, Delano, Shafter, Lamont, Mojave and Ridgecrest.

Superior Court of California, County of Kern — Presiding Judge

John W. Lua

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

Christie Canales Norris

Kern County Superior Court — Dept. 16, Misdemeanor and Felony Arraignments

Thurman Owen

Kern County Superior Court — Dept. 1, Master Felony Calendar

Tiffany Organ-Bowles

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

Kern has the fullest transparency section in this group: a Transparency home, officer-involved shooting statistics, critical incidents, annual reports, military equipment reporting, PC 13652.1 crowd-control use-of-force reporting and the PC 10008 in-custody death page.
Capacity is recorded 'yes' on the published average daily population of approximately 1,700; rated bed counts are not published by the county.
PREA is recorded 'yes' on published facility reports, audit certification reports and staffing plans for the Mojave and Ridgecrest jails.
Budget is recorded 'yes' on the county's Budget page, which links a recommended budget document; that document server returned HTTP 403 to this tool, so the detention line items inside it could not be read.
The Detentions Bureau page links a bail schedule, but it is the Superior Court's schedule at kern.courts.ca.gov, not county guidance on how to post bail — bond_info is recorded 'no'.
The Inmate Services Section page names an Inmate Commissary and Inmate Telephones and Video Visitation unit but publishes no rates.
No BSCC inspection report is posted on the Sheriff's transparency pages.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district.

What California law requires

Kern County posts a death-in-custody page.

Posts 7 of 7

The page is here. A dedicated page titled 'In Custody Death Reporting' that reproduces the text of Penal Code 10008 and then lists deaths in a table carrying agency, date, age, county, facility, location of death, custody status, means of death, manner of death, race and gender. The date column is headed 'Date of Birth' although the values are plainly the dates of death (for example a 62-year-old with 03/04/2026). Several 2025 and 2026 entries record means and manner as 'Pending Investigation'; column heading 'Gneder' is misspelled on the page.

✓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

70 people have died in the Kern County jail since 2016.

17 by suicide

32 illness or medical

70 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them58 of 70

Most recent death on the state's record2025-09-09

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 Kern 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 Kern 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