The Detention Center
San Diego Central Jail; George Bailey Detention Facility; Las Colinas Detention and Reentry Facility; Rock Mountain Detention Facility; South Bay Detention Facility; Vista Detention Facility; East Mesa Reentry Facility
- Operated bySan Diego County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes jail namesYes — seven detention facilities are named on the Sheriff's visiting page
- East Mesa Reentry Facility address446 Alta Rd., Ste. 5200, San Diego, CA 92158
- Sheriff's own description'a system of seven detention facilities throughout San Diego, with a combined average daily population of more than 5,000 incarcerated persons'
- Separate medical examinerCounty of San Diego Department of the Medical Examiner (https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/me.html)
- Rated capacity6,624 beds across 8 facilities
Source: San Diego County Sheriff's Office — Detention Services Bureau / Visiting · 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 — not published
- ✗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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Kelly A. Martinez
- Title as publishedSheriff
- Also serves asNot the coroner — San Diego County has a separate Department of the Medical Examiner
- Detention systemSeven detention facilities, combined average daily population of more than 5,000
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: San Diego County Sheriff's Office — Command Staff · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Large multi-judge court; only the Presiding Judge and Assistant Presiding Judge are listed, per the brief. The court's Executive Committee page also names supervising judges (Ana España, Enrique Camarena, Selena Dong Epley, Loren G. Freestone, Laura H. Miller, Theodore M. Weathers, Brad A. Weinreb).
Superior Court of California, County of San Diego — Presiding Judge
- Michael S. Groch
Superior Court of California, County of San Diego — Assistant Presiding Judge
- Roderick W. Shelton
- 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 Kelly A. Martinez runs the jails; cause and manner of death are determined by a separate County Department of the Medical Examiner, not by the Sheriff.
- Daily Population Report is published per facility (SDCJ, GBDF, EMRF, LCDRF, SBDF, RMDF, VDF) as males/females/non-binary counts; no rated bed capacity figure is published alongside it.
- PREA: the Sheriff posts PREA Annual Reports for 2015–2024 at https://www.sdsheriff.gov/bureaus/detention-services-bureau/prison-rape-elimination-act but no independent PREA audit report; the check is recorded 'no' on that basis.
- Fees: all jail phone calls have been free since July 1, 2021 (vendor Smart Communications) and a 'Commissary Stores Price List Effective 1-26-26' is published with item-level prices.
- Bail: the Sheriff publishes a bail bond agency list but no guidance on how to post bail; the jail information page says only that a list of licensed agencies is posted inside the facilities.
- No county-published contract or per-diem rate for holding other agencies' prisoners was found; U.S. Marshals Service detention agreements covering San Diego are published by USMS, not by the county.
- BSCC rated capacity file lists 6,624 beds across eight San Diego entries including a 499-bed CoreCivic Type IV facility; that figure comes from the state, not from the county's own site.
- Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district.
What California law requires
San Diego County posts a death-in-custody page.
Posts 5 of 7The page is here. The Sheriff's 'Homicide, In-Custody Deaths, Officer Involved Shootings' page carries 'In-Custody Deaths by Year' tables covering 2016–2026 and defines custody status categories, but the tables themselves did not render in any retrieval attempt, so their columns could not be verified; the page does not cite AB 2761 or Penal Code 10008. What is machine-readable are the Critical Incident Review Board in-custody death reports (2021–2024), each of which states agency, county, facility and housing unit or cell, date of death and manner and means (e.g. https://www.sdsheriff.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/9676/639014793783770000 — Eric Wolf, San Diego Central Jail, January 5, 2024, accident, acute fentanyl and diphenhydramine intoxication) but gives no race, gender, age or custodial status. The Sheriff also posts individual in-custody death news releases (most recent located: February 18, 2026, San Diego Central Jail, https://www.sdsheriff.gov/Home/Components/News/News/4018/514). BSCC's In-Custody Death Review county list points to a Sheriff news release for San Diego (https://www.bscc.ca.gov/icdr-county-info/).
- ✓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
140 people have died in the San Diego 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 San Diego 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 San Diego 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