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

The Detention Center

Sacramento County Main Jail; Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center (RCCC)

Operated bySacramento County Sheriff's Office, Correctional Services
County publishes jail namesYes — both named on the Sheriff's site and in the county's Jail Fact Sheet
Main Jail address651 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
RCCC address12500 Bruceville Road, Elk Grove, CA 95757 (140-acre site, 27 miles south of Sacramento)
Role splitMain Jail is the county's only booking facility and houses primarily pre-trial defendants; RCCC houses primarily sentenced people and absorbs Main Jail overflow
Rated capacity (BSCC file)3,972 — Main Jail 2,296, RCCC 1,676
Rated capacity3,972 beds across 2 facilities

Source: Sacramento County — Sacramento County Jail Fact Sheet · 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
✗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 Sacramento 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 builtMain Jail built 1989; RCCC was an Air Force base deeded to the county in 1947 and converted to a jail around 1960
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found (the county budget lists 2003 Refunding Certificates of Participation for the Main Jail)
BedsMain Jail original rated capacity 1,250, later increased to 2,380; RCCC current rated capacity 1,625 — both figures published in the county's Jail Fact Sheet

Since then

Main Jail rated capacity raised from 1,250 to 2,380 after original construction
FY 2026-27 recommended budget funds completion of the Main Jail Acute Psychiatric Unit / Suicidal Inmate Temporary Housing Unit expansion

The Sheriff

Sheriff Jim Cooper

Title as publishedSheriff
Also serves asNo — Sacramento County has a separate Coroner department (coroner.saccounty.gov), listed apart from the Sheriff in the county's department directory
OfficeSacramento County Sheriff's Office, 4510 Orange Grove Avenue, Sacramento

Still needed

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

Source: Sacramento County Sheriff's Office — Leadership Command Staff · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Sacramento is a large trial court; only the Presiding Judge (Lawrence G. Brown, two-year term beginning January 1, 2026) and Assistant Presiding Judge (Steven M. Gevercer, 2026-2027) are listed here rather than the full bench. The court's phone directory and judicial-assignment pages returned 403 to automated retrieval, so no bail or arraignment department assignment could be confirmed.

Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento — Presiding Judge (2026-2027)

Lawrence G. Brown

Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento — Assistant Presiding Judge (2026-2027)

Steven M. Gevercer

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

Sacramento is the only county in this group whose Sheriff is not also the Coroner; the county runs a separate Coroner department.
The county's Jail Fact Sheet publishes both rated capacity and a population count: as of September 1, 2022 the Main Jail held 1,878 people (79% of rated capacity) and RCCC 1,396 (86%), with the system at roughly 82% of rated capacity. It also reports that 68% of the jail population has at least one chronic health condition and 67% a diagnosed mental health condition.
PREA is the strongest disclosure here: the Sheriff publishes year-end PREA reports for the Main Jail and RCCC for 2014-2019 plus a PREA Audit Report for each facility.
The Sheriff's Transparency page links a Dropbox folder of material 'responsive to the County's obligation pursuant to the Mays Consent Decree', the federal class-action settlement covering jail medical, mental health and disability care. The folder's contents could not be enumerated by automated retrieval, so the 'inspections' check is recorded as 'no' rather than credited to an unverified list.
The Main Jail page states the facility 'provides custodial and security services ... for the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office and other outside agencies', and the Jail Fact Sheet notes 78 agencies book arrestees there, but no contract or per-diem rate is published.
Bail: the FAQ page tells callers to phone the Main Jail to learn a bail amount; no page explains how to post bail. Marked 'no'.
Fees: the Inmate Funds page says 'Fees are applicable' for TouchPay deposits but publishes no amounts, and no phone or commissary rate is given — the phone system is Securus with no published rate.
The state's death-in-custody file records 59 Sacramento jail deaths (6 suicide, 32 natural, 49 unconvicted, 2 pending) against one death record published on the Sheriff's site.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district.

What California law requires

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

No page found

No Penal Code 10008 / AB 2761 page was found. Searched https://www.sacsheriff.com/ and every page linked from it, including /pages/transparency.php, /pages/SB519.php, /pages/released_cases.php, /pages/sac_media.php, /pages/main_jail.php, /pages/rccc.php, /pages/main_jail_prea.php, /pages/faqs.php and /InmateInformation/, plus https://www.saccounty.gov/ and its department directory. The closest thing published is a 'SB519 RELEASED CASES' table on the Transparency page, which the Sheriff describes as records 'relating to an investigation conducted by the local detention facility involving a death incident.' That table holds a single row — date of occurrence 5/12/2024, location 651 I St, gender M, race B — with a link to a Dropbox folder of disclosed records. It gives no age, no custodial status, no manner or means, and no location within the facility, and it is not presented as a section 10008 posting. 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

59 people have died in the Sacramento County jail since 2016.

6 by suicide

32 illness or medical

59 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them49 of 59

Most recent death on the state's record2025-10-06

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 Sacramento 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 Sacramento 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