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

The Detention Center

Napa County Jail

Operated byNapa County Department of Corrections
County publishes a jail nameYes — Napa County Jail
Address2210 Napa Vallejo Highway, Napa, CA 94558
Separated from the SheriffThe Board of Supervisors separated the Department of Corrections from the Sheriff's Office in 1975; the Jail Administrator is appointed by the Board rather than elected
Published capacityMaximum capacity of 304 incarcerated persons
Facility size109,302 square feet
Housing typesAdministrative separation, general population, maximum security, medical unit, observation cells, protective custody, special housing, temporary holding
Rated capacity304 beds

Source: Napa County Department of Corrections — About Corrections · 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 Napa 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 for the current facility; the original jail near Third and Coombs streets opened in 1976
Original costNot found
Paid for byReplacement jail budget of $133.3 million approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors in October 2022
Beds304 maximum capacity (county); BSCC rated capacity 304 for the replacement facility

Since then

Replacement detention facility built 2023 onward, reported at 332 beds including a 28-bed mental health/medical unit
72-bed Type IV staff-secure transitional housing facility funded under SB 1022: $12,081,600 state financing plus $1,392,400 county match, $13,474,000 total

The Sheriff

Sheriff Oscar Ortiz

Title as publishedSheriff (county staff directory); the county's Coroner pages refer to the office as 'Napa Sheriff-Coroner'
Also serves asCounty Coroner — the Coroner is a division of the Sheriff's Office
Does not run the jailThe Napa County Jail is operated by the Napa County Department of Corrections, which does not operate under the Sheriff's authority
BackgroundBegan his career with the Napa County Department of Corrections in 1992

Still needed

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

Source: Napa County — Staff Directory, Oscar Ortiz · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Full judicial assignment list published; the four Criminal Division judges are the bench that handles arraignments and bail. The sole commissioner is assigned to family and juvenile dependency, not criminal.

Superior Court of California, County of Napa — Presiding Judge

Scott R.L. Young

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

Joseph J. Solga

Superior Court of California, County of Napa — Criminal Division

Kecia Lind (Lead Judge, Dept 1)
Veronica Juarez (Dept 3)
Elia Ortiz (Dept 4)
Scott R.L. Young (Dept 5)

Superior Court of California, County of Napa — Commissioner

Douglas Skelton (Department 6; Family and Juvenile Dependency)

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

Napa is unusual: the elected Sheriff-Coroner does not run the jail. The Napa County Department of Corrections has been separate from the Sheriff's Office since 1975 and its Jail Administrator is a Board appointee.
Napa's AB 2761 page is the most complete in this group — a structured table with every required field plus the statutory text.
The county's only PREA page covers the Probation Department's Juvenile Hall, not the jail: https://www.countyofnapa.org/1720/Prison-Rape-Elimination-Act-PREA
The commissary page publishes a $90 weekly purchase limit and names MyCarePack as vendor, but no phone, video-visit or commissary item rates.
Grand jury jail inspection reports exist but are published by the Superior Court, not the county: https://www.napa.courts.ca.gov/general-information/grand-jury/grand-jury-archive
Replacement-facility bed count, cost and the 1976 original opening date come from the Napa County Civil Grand Jury report 'Napa County Jail: Out with the Old, In with the New', published by the court.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district.

What California law requires

Napa County posts a death-in-custody page.

Posts 7 of 7

The page is here. A dedicated 'Mortality in Custody' page headed 'AB 2761' publishes a table with columns Date, Agency, County, Facility, Death Location, Race, Gender, Age, Custodial Status, Manner and Method — all seven required elements — and reproduces the full text of Penal Code § 10008. Four deaths are listed (04/21/2023, 04/24/2023, 10/24/2023, 04/05/2025), each attributed to the Napa County Dept. of Corrections, with locations down to 'North Jail Medical Wing' and 'North Jail Tank 4'.

✓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

8 people have died in the Napa County jail since 2016.

1 by suicide

0 illness or medical

8 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them4 of 8

Most recent death on the state's record2025-04-05

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 Napa 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 Napa 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