San Benito County, California — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

San Benito County Jail (Main Jail); Curtis J. Hill Rehabilitation Center

Operated bySan Benito County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
County publishes jail namesYes — both named on the Corrections page
Jail address710 Flynn Road, Hollister, CA 95023 (both facilities share the site)
Main Jail structureFour male detention pods (two maximum-security at 35 each, two medium at 27 each) plus two female pods
Curtis J. Hill Rehabilitation CenterTwo-story, 22,000 sq ft, 72 beds — reported by the 2025-26 Civil Grand Jury as not currently in use for lack of correctional personnel
Rated capacity (BSCC file)214 — San Benito Adult Detention 142, Curtis J. Hill Rehabilitation Center 72
Rated capacity214 beds across 2 facilities

Source: San Benito County — Corrections · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✓Beds and daily population
✓What it costs taxpayers
✗Deaths in custody — not published
✗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 San Benito 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 builtSan Benito County Jail opened November 17, 1992; Curtis J. Hill Rehabilitation Center opened 2021 (the county Corrections page gives 2020)
Original costMain Jail approximately $7 million; Curtis J. Hill Rehabilitation Center approximately $25 million
Paid for byThe county used grant funds to help offset the Curtis J. Hill Rehabilitation Center's construction cost; the funding source for the 1992 jail is not published
BedsMain Jail 108 male and 16 female (124 total); Curtis J. Hill Rehabilitation Center 72; the Corrections page gives total rated capacity 124 with an average population of about 100

Since then

2020-2021 — Curtis J. Hill Rehabilitation Center added, two-story, 22,000 sq ft, 72 beds; reported by the 2025-26 Civil Grand Jury as standing unused for lack of correctional staff

The Sheriff

Sheriff Eric S. Taylor

Title as publishedSheriff-Coroner
Also serves asCounty Coroner
Position16th Sheriff-Coroner of San Benito County
Corrections CommanderTomas Corral

Still needed

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

Source: San Benito County — Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

A three-department court. Assignments effective 7/1/2026. The published calendar shows an afternoon 'Arraignments, Last Dayers' calendar but does not state which department is fixed for bail matters.

Superior Court of California, County of San Benito — Presiding Judge, Department 1

J. Omar Rodriguez

Superior Court of California, County of San Benito — Assistant Presiding Judge, Department 3

Patrick K. Palacios

Superior Court of California, County of San Benito — Commissioner, Department 2

Page B. Galloway

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 county's own Corrections page publishes rated capacity and average population — rare at this county size — but publishes no roster, no PREA material and nothing on deaths in custody.
The 2025-2026 San Benito County Civil Grand Jury final report contains a jail inspection (facilities toured December 22, 2025) and reports that the BSCC inspected the jail on January 27, 2026 and issued a report dated February 26, 2026 finding that incarcerated persons were held in sobering cells longer than 12 hours without hourly safety checks. That report is published by the Superior Court at https://www.sanbenito.courts.ca.gov/system/files/general/2025-26-cgj-consolidated-report.pdf, not by the county, so the 'inspections' check is recorded as 'no'.
The Grand Jury also records the Main Jail as a 28,000 sq ft facility, notes limited lighting and uneven floors in the showers, and finds the Curtis J. Hill intake shower non-compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Budget: the FY 2025-2026 Adopted Budget is published; the portion retrieved shows a 'Jail & Juvenile Hall Impact' fund of $404,769 and Sheriff booking-fee revenue. A separate jail operating appropriation line was not isolated in the portion retrieved.
Fees: the Telephone Access page states new arrivals get free local calls and that long distance is 'provided at the expense of the person receiving the call', and directs callers to Global Tel Link for rates. No rate, video-visit charge or commissary price is published.
Staffing, per the Grand Jury: 31 correctional officers, four of them on medical or administrative leave, covering two 12-hour shifts.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district; meets in the Board Chambers, County Administration Building, 481 4th Street, Hollister.

What California law requires

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

No page found

No in-custody death page was found. Searched https://www.sanbenitocountyca.gov/departments/sheriff-s-office and every page it links, including /units-and-divisions/corrections and its children (alternative-sentencing, bail-and-deposits, commissary, inmate-services, telephone-access, visiting, victim-information-and-notification-everyday-vine), /departments/office-of-the-sheriff/media-and-public-affairs (four press releases, all from early 2024, none about a death in custody), /departments/office-of-the-sheriff/sheriff-s-office-policy (a Domo-embedded transparency portal), /departments/office-of-the-sheriff/ab-481 and /departments/sheriff-s-office/contact-us. None mentions AB 2761, Penal Code 10008, in-custody death or custodial death. The state's death-in-custody file records 2 San Benito jail deaths, both unconvicted and both pending. 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

2 people have died in the San Benito County jail since 2022.

0 by suicide

0 illness or medical

2 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them2 of 2

Most recent death on the state's record2023-10-16

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 San Benito 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 San Benito 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