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

The Detention Center

Not found — the county does not publish a name for the facility

Operated byKings County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameNo — the Sheriff's page gives only a 'Jail and Inmate information' phone number, (559) 852-2812 or 4103
Jail mailing addressPO Box 1699, Hanford, CA 93230
Sheriff's Office address1550 Kings County Drive, Hanford, CA 93230
Name in the state rated capacity fileKings County Jail Facility
What was triedhttps://www.countyofkingsca.gov/departments/public-safety/sheriff, https://www.countyofkingsca.gov/about-us/site-map, https://www.countyofkingsca.gov/departments/public-safety, and the site search at https://www.countyofkingsca.gov/about-us/search?q=jail — no jail page exists on the county site
Rated capacity637 beds

Source: Kings County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

1/10Closed

✗The jail is named — not published
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✓What it costs taxpayers
✗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 Kings 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
Beds637 in the state rated capacity file (Kings County Jail Facility). Not published on the county's own site.

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Dave Putnam

Title as publishedSheriff-Coroner-Public Administrator
Also serves asCounty Coroner and Public Administrator
Sworn inNovember 24, 2025
CareerJoined the Kings County Sheriff's Office in October 1990; retired as Undersheriff in April 2023; returned to office in 2025

Still needed

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

Source: Kings County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

The court publishes its bench only as a department list on the Location & Contact Info page; it has no judicial-officers page and names no dedicated arraignment or bail department. Department 9 is listed as 'Pro Tems'.

Superior Court of California, County of Kings — Presiding Judge

Kathy Ciuffini (Department 8)

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

Melissa D'Morias (Department 7)

Kings Superior Court — Departments 1 to 10

Jennifer Giuliani (Dept. 1)
Robert S. Burns (Dept. 2)
Kendra D. Weber (Dept. 3)
Commissioner Mark Skinner (Dept. 4)
Risé Donlon (Dept. 5)
Marianne Gilbert (Dept. 6)
Jim A. Trevino (Dept. 10)

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

Kings publishes the least of the six counties in this group. There is no jail page at all: the Sheriff's department page is the only place the jail appears, and only as a phone number.
The county publishes a Sheriff's Office Policy Manual and a separate Custody Policy Manual, but the document server returns HTTP 403 to this tool so neither could be read.
Roster is recorded 'no'. The Sheriff's page directs the public to VINE / vinelink.com, which is a name-and-booking-number lookup and victim notification service, not a published list of who is in custody.
Budget is recorded 'yes' on the county's Budget page, which posts Final and Proposed budget volumes; the most recent volumes listed at the top of that page were not individually opened because the document server blocks this tool.
The Sheriff's page also links a Kings County District Attorney's Office Flock transparency portal — automated licence-plate reader data, not detention data.
No BSCC inspection report is posted on the county's own site.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district.

What California law requires

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

No page found

No in-custody death reporting page was located. Checked https://www.countyofkingsca.gov/departments/public-safety/sheriff (whose document list carries a Policy Manual, a Custody Policy Manual, a Military Equipment Policy, an Annual Report for 2022, a 'Public Notice' and an Organizational Chart, but no death reporting), https://www.countyofkingsca.gov/departments/public-safety, https://www.countyofkingsca.gov/about-us/site-map, and the county site search for 'in-custody death', '2761' and 'jail'. The county's document server (home/showpublisheddocument) returns HTTP 403 to this tool, so the item labelled only 'Public Notice' could not be opened and is not claimed either way. 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

7 people have died in the Kings County jail since 2016.

1 by suicide

4 illness or medical

7 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them7 of 7

Most recent death on the state's record2022-02-15

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 Kings 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 Kings 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