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

The Detention Center

John Zunino Jail Complex (Intake and Main Jail) and Honor Farm Complex

Operated bySan Joaquin County Sheriff's Office, Custody Division
County publishes a jail nameYes — 'John Zunino Jail Complex and Honor Farm Complex (Intake, Main Jail, Honor Farm)'
Jail address7000 Michael Canlis Blvd, French Camp, CA 95231
Staffing as publishedAbout 270 correctional officers, deputies and support staff; two captains, nine lieutenants and an Inmate Programs Director
Three visiting facilities namedHonor Farm, Jail Core, South Jail
Rated capacity1,818 beds across 3 facilities

Source: San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office — Custody Division · 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 — 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 Joaquin 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 builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Patrick Withrow

Title as publishedSheriff
Coroner functionThe Sheriff's Office lists ten divisions and none is a Coroner or Medical Examiner division; the county department list contains no Coroner department
Office and jail address7000 Michael Canlis Blvd, French Camp, CA 95231

Still needed

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

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

The Judges

The court publishes judicial administrative assignments rather than a bail-setting roster; the Supervising Judge, Criminal is included because criminal arraignments fall under that assignment.

Superior Court of California, County of San Joaquin — Presiding Judge

Lance G. Jacot

Superior Court of California, County of San Joaquin — Assistant Presiding Judge

Jayne Chong-Soon Lee

Superior Court of California, County of San Joaquin — Supervising Judge, Criminal

Xapuri Villapudua

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

No jail population count or bed capacity is published on the Sheriff's site; the 2025 Annual Report PDF (https://sjsheriff.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/2025-Annual-Report-FNL-WEB.pdf) returned no machine-readable text.
Bail procedures are set out plainly: cash bail in U.S. currency or cashier's check made out to the San Joaquin County Superior Court, posted at the jail, or a bond through an agent who 'generally charge[s] a 10% fee'.
PREA: https://sjsheriff.org/prea explains the law and names a PREA Coordinator, but publishes no audit result; the check is recorded 'no' on that basis.
No phone, video visit or commissary rates were found on the Sheriff's site.
BSCC rated capacity for San Joaquin is 1,818 beds across the John J. Zunino Facility (1,195), Honor Farm (355) and Detention and Program Facility (268) — a state figure, not a county publication.
The county's department list includes no Coroner department and the Sheriff's Office lists no Coroner division; a chief medical examiner arrangement has been reported in local press but no county page confirming it was located.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district.

What California law requires

San Joaquin County posts a death-in-custody page.

Posts 4 of 7

The page is here. There is no consolidated AB 2761 page. The Sheriff posts a separate news release for each death, each opening 'In accordance with AB 2761 and to maintain transparency with our community...'; BSCC's county list points to one such release (https://www.bscc.ca.gov/icdr-county-info/). The most recent, dated 5/5/2026, names the agency, the county, the San Joaquin County Jail and the Medical Housing Unit cell, the date, and the decedent's age (44) and gender (male), but gives no race, no custodial status, and no manner or means — a Protocol Investigation was said to be under way. Earlier releases exist for 3/18/2026, 6/14/2025, 3/10/2025, 9/11/2024, 7/26/2024, 1/25/2023 and 10/30/2022.

✓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

37 people have died in the San Joaquin County jail since 2016.

10 by suicide

8 illness or medical

37 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them28 of 37

Most recent death on the state's record2025-06-14

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 Joaquin 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 Joaquin 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