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

The Detention Center

Wayne Brown Correctional Facility (with the Truckee Substation Jail)

Operated byNevada County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
County publishes a jail nameYes — Wayne Brown Correctional Facility
Opened1992; named after former Nevada County Sheriff Wayne Brown
Corrections Division scopeTwo jails, a court holding facility and the transportation unit
Second facilityTruckee Substation Jail
Mail addressWayne Brown Correctional Facility: 2100 or Truckee Substation Jail: 2101, PO Box 96777, Las Vegas, NV 89193
Rated capacity284 beds

Source: Nevada County Sheriff — Corrections Division · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

5/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✓Who is in custody
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✓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 Nevada 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 built1992 (Wayne Brown Correctional Facility)
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsNot found on any county page (BSCC rated capacity 284 for Wayne Brown Correctional Facility)

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Shannan Moon

Title as publishedSheriff-Coroner-Public Administrator
Also serves asCounty Coroner and Public Administrator
Office950 Maidu Avenue, Nevada City, CA 95959; staff of 174

Still needed

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

Source: Nevada County — Sheriff Moon · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Full assignment table published. Judge Thomsen has been Presiding Judge 2016-2018 and again from 2026; judges in Departments 1, 2 and 4 plus Truckee Department A carry criminal calendars. The sole commissioner handles family law, child support and traffic, not criminal bail.

Superior Court of California, County of Nevada — Presiding Judge

B. Scott Thomsen (Department 4 — Criminal and Juvenile)

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

S. Robert Tice-Raskin (Department 6 — Civil and Probate)

Superior Court of California, County of Nevada — Criminal assignments

Alissa L. Bjerkhoel (Department 1 — Criminal)
Courtney C. Abril (Department 2 — Criminal and Traffic)
Yvette Durant (Truckee Department A — includes Criminal)

Superior Court of California, County of Nevada — Commissioner

Robert J. Brodnik (Department 5 / Truckee Department B — Family Law, DCSS and Traffic)

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

Sheriff-Coroner-Public Administrator Shannan Moon runs the jail and the coroner function.
PREA disclosure is the strongest in this group: annual PREA reports for every year 2014 through 2025, plus final PREA audit reports for 2016, 2018, 2021 and 2024 covering both Wayne Brown Correctional Facility and the Truckee facility.
Jail policies are posted under SB 978 at https://www.nevadacountyca.gov/3525/Sheriffs-Office-Policies
The county publishes no bed capacity, no bail-posting guidance, and no phone, video-visit or commissary rates — the TouchPay and Telmate pages state only that 'There is a charge for this service'.
Grand jury detention facility inspection reports for Wayne Brown Correctional Facility and the Truckee Substation exist but are hosted on the Superior Court's site, not the county's; the county's grand jury page points readers there: https://www.nevada.courts.ca.gov/general-information/grand-jury/grand-jury-reports
The FY 2026-2027 Consolidated User Fee Schedule is published, but it is a county-wide fee schedule and does not carry jail phone or commissary rates.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district.

What California law requires

Nevada County posts a death-in-custody page.

Posts 7 of 7

The page is here. The Corrections Division Public Documents page carries an 'In-custody Death' section that reproduces Penal Code § 10008 in full and links one report PDF, '01-17-2023' (https://www.nevadacountyca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/47497/01-17-2023-PDF, updated 03/15/2023). That PDF lists Agency: Nevada County Sheriff's Office; County: Nevada County; Facility: Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital; Location: Emergency Room; Race: White; Gender: Female; Age: 40; Date of Death: 01/17/2023; Custody Status: Awaiting Arraignment; Manner/Means: Natural — all seven elements. Only this single death is posted; the state's death-in-custody file records 3 Nevada County jail deaths.

✓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

3 people have died in the Nevada County jail since 2016.

0 by suicide

2 illness or medical

3 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them3 of 3

Most recent death on the state's record2023-01-17

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 Nevada 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 Nevada 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