The Detention Center
Robert Presley Detention Center; Cois M. Byrd Detention Center; John J. Benoit Detention Center; Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility; Blythe Jail
- Operated byRiverside County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- County publishes jail namesYes — all five named with addresses on the Corrections Operations page
- Robert Presley Detention Center4000 Orange Street, Riverside, CA 92501
- Cois M. Byrd Detention Center30755-B Auld Road, Murrieta, CA 92563
- John J. Benoit Detention Center82675 St. Hwy. 111, Indio, CA 92201
- Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility1627 S. Hargrave Street, Banning, CA 92220
- Blythe Jail260 N. Spring Street, Blythe, CA 92225
- Rated capacity (BSCC file, not county)5,006 across the five Type II facilities
- Rated capacity5,006 beds across 5 facilities
Source: Riverside County Sheriff — Corrections Operations · 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 — not published
- ✓Independent inspection
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✗How to post bond — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found on any county page
- Original costNot found on any county page
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found on any county page (BSCC rated capacity file: 5,006 total — Presley 760, Smith 1,522, Byrd 1,142, Benoit 1,504, Blythe 78)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Chad Bianco
- Title as publishedSheriff, Coroner, and Public Administrator
- Also serves asCounty Coroner and Public Administrator — the Coroner's Bureau is a division of the Sheriff's Office
- Took officeElected November 6, 2018; re-elected June 2022
- Scope as publishedFive jail facilities, sixteen court buildings, twelve patrol stations, ~4,400 employees, operating budget 'just under 1.3 billion dollars'
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Riverside County Sheriff — Sheriff Chad Bianco · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Riverside is one of California's largest trial courts, with judicial officers spread across justice centers in Riverside, Banning, Blythe, Corona, Hemet, Indio, Menifee, Moreno Valley, Murrieta, Palm Springs and Temecula. Only the Presiding and Assistant Presiding Judges are listed here; the court's full 2026 Judicial Officer Assignments roster is published at https://www.riverside.courts.ca.gov/system/files/general/judicialassignments.pdf. That roster lists officers by department and does not identify a single bail-setting bench.
Superior Court of California, County of Riverside — Presiding Judge (2025-2026)
- Jacqueline C. Jackson
Superior Court of California, County of Riverside — Assistant Presiding Judge (2025-2026)
- Dean Benjamini
- 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 2025-2026 Riverside County Civil Grand Jury report, 'After a Decade of Record Deaths in County Jails, the Community Deserves Transparency through Oversight' (May 7, 2026), is published on the county's own site. It records that the California Attorney General opened a civil rights investigation into the Riverside County jail system in February 2023 after a record number of in-custody deaths, that the investigation remained active in early 2026 with no public report, and that twenty-nine in-custody deaths occurred between the launch of the state inquiry and late April 2026.
- The Sheriff's Corrections Operations page carries a PREA section, but it is policy and reporting-channel text only — no audit result is published.
- No bed count or daily population is published on any Riverside County or Sheriff's page.
- No bail or bond guidance page was found on riversidesheriff.org; the sitemap contains no bail entry and the FAQ page does not address posting bail.
- Fees: the Money page publishes an Access Corrections deposit fee table ($1.00-$3.95 depending on channel and amount) but no phone rate, video-visit rate or commissary price list.
- The state's death-in-custody file records 97 Riverside jail deaths (15 suicide, 28 natural, 87 unconvicted, 5 pending).
- Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district: Jose Medina (1st), Karen Spiegel (2nd), Chuck Washington (3rd), V. Manuel Perez (4th), Yxstian Gutierrez (5th). Meets at 4080 Lemon Street, Riverside.
What California law requires
Riverside County posts a death-in-custody page.
Posts 7 of 7The page is here. The Sheriff's Office publishes an 'In-Custody Deaths' news category holding about 52 items from July 2023 to April 2026. It mixes two kinds of post. The narrative 'In-Custody Death' releases give the facility, the location inside it, the decedent's name and age and the circumstances. Interleaved with them are formal 'Riverside County Coroner — In Custody Death Information Release' postings keyed to a coroner's case number, which carry every element the statute requires: Agency with Custodial Responsibility, County of Death, Location of Death plus 'If in a facility, exact location within the facility', Race, Gender, Age, Date of Death, Custodial Status and Manner / How Death Occurred. The most recent such release (case 2026-03254, posted April 29, 2026) records a 43-year-old Black male, awaiting trial, who died 04/28/2026 at Riverside University Health System Medical Center, with manner and means 'Pending Investigation'. The category is not labelled 'AB 2761' or 'PC 10008' anywhere 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
97 people have died in the Riverside County jail since 2016.
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 Riverside 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.
- Find your polling place and check your registration →
- Your county elections office →
- Register to vote in California →
The county elections office runs the polling place in Riverside 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