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

The Detention Center

Plumas County Correctional Facility

Operated byPlumas County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameYes — 'Plumas County Correctional Facility' on the county Jail page
Jail address56 Abernethy Lane, Quincy, CA 95971
Sheriff's administration1400 East Main Street, Quincy, CA 95971
Rated capacity (BSCC file, not county)61 beds, Type II
StatusNew facility; the SB 844 construction grant project period ran October 19, 2018 through March 17, 2026
Rated capacity61 beds

Source: Plumas County — Jail · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✗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
✗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 Plumas 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 builtNew Plumas County Correctional Facility built under the state SB 844 program; audited project period October 19, 2018 through March 17, 2026
Original cost$25,840,884 total project cost, of which $22,458,087 was construction (independent auditor's report posted by the Sheriff's Office)
Paid for byState funds $25,000,000 (SB 844 Local Criminal Justice Facilities Construction Program, administered by BSCC and the Department of Finance); county cash match $486,439; county in-kind match $354,445
BedsNot published on any county page (BSCC rated capacity file: 61)

Since then

Replacement facility at 56 Abernethy Lane, Quincy, built with the SB 844 grant; the FY 2024-25 adopted budget book notes 'The County's new jail will be fully operational' and flags uncertainty about its operating cost impact

The Sheriff

Sheriff Chad Hermann

Title as publishedSheriff-Coroner
Also serves asCounty Coroner — the county page states 'In Plumas County, the offices of Sheriff and Coroner are combined'
How he took officeAppointed by the Board of Supervisors in August 2025 after Sheriff Todd Johns retired; not elected to the office
PredecessorTodd Johns, named as Sheriff in the FY 2024-25 adopted budget book

Still needed

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

Source: Plumas County — Sheriff/Coroner · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Plumas is a two-judge court. The court's site names Judge Douglas Prouty (Dept. 1) and Judge William Abramson (Dept. 2); it does not publish which of the two serves as Presiding Judge, and no commissioner is listed. The 2025-26 Civil Grand Jury final report is addressed to both judges.

Superior Court of California, County of Plumas — Department 1

Douglas Prouty

Superior Court of California, County of Plumas — Department 2

William Abramson

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

The Sheriff's Office posts an independent auditor's report on the SB 844 jail construction grant directly on its own page — unusually detailed financial disclosure for a county this size.
The 2025-26 Civil Grand Jury filed a 'Detention Facility Inquiry Statement' under Penal Code 919(b): jurors were given a tour of the Plumas County Correctional Facility on October 1, 2025 and reported 'No observations warranted further investigation by the jury.'
The FY 2024-25 adopted budget book carries separate budget units for Sheriff, Jails, Capital Improvement Jail, Criminal Justice Construction, Inmate Welfare and Jail - Supplemental Law Enforcement Services Fund.
Fees: the Commissary Deposit and Phone Accounts pages route the public to Access Corrections and NCIC but publish no deposit fee, no per-minute call rate and no commissary price list.
There is no public in-custody roster; the Jail page states officers will release only an inmate's charges and bail amount by telephone.
The Jail page still carries a COVID-era notice suspending visitation and over-the-counter money 'until further notice', dated by its own text to spring 2020.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district; meets the first three Tuesdays of each month at the Court House, 520 Main Street, Quincy.

What California law requires

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

No page found

No in-custody death page exists. The full county sitemap (https://www.plumascounty.us/sitemap) was pulled and contains no entry for in-custody death, custodial death, AB 2761 or Penal Code 10008; the Sheriff/Coroner page (/587/SheriffCoroner), the Jail page (/2170/Jail) and its sub-pages (/2514/Visitation, /2518/Bail-Bonds, /2520/Commissary-Deposit, /2521/Phone-Accounts, /2522/Kiosks, /2662/Corrections-Policies) carry nothing on deaths in custody. The state's death-in-custody file records 1 Plumas jail death (a suicide). 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

1 people have died in the Plumas County jail since 2022.

1 by suicide

0 illness or medical

1 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them1 of 1

Most recent death on the state's record2022-10-30

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 Plumas 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 Plumas 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