The Detention Center
Santa Clara County Main Jail; Elmwood Correctional Complex (Men's Facility and Women's Facility)
- Operated bySanta Clara County Office of the Sheriff — Custody Bureau
- County publishes a jail nameYes — Main Jail Complex, Elmwood Correctional Men's Facility, Elmwood Correctional Women's Facility all named on the Custody Bureau pages
- Main Jail address150 West Hedding Street, San Jose, CA 95110
- Main Jail design capacity as publishedDesigned to house up to 1,084
- Main Jail annual budget as publishedApproximately $76 million
- BookingsApproximately 30,000 per year; approximately 470 staff
- Rated capacity3,733 beds across 3 facilities
Source: Office of the Sheriff — Main Jail Complex · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
8/10Open- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✓Deaths in custody
- ✓PREA audits
- ✓Independent inspection
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsMain Jail 'designed to house up to 1,084' per the county's own page. State rated capacity totals 3,733 across three facilities — Main Jail 793, Elmwood Complex Men's 2,307, Elmwood Complex Women's 633.
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Robert Jonsen
- Title as publishedSheriff
- Assumed officeDecember 2022; the office's Meet the Sheriff page describes him as the county's 29th Sheriff
- Also serves as coronerNo — Santa Clara County maintains a separate Office of the Medical Examiner-Coroner, led by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michelle Jorden
- Medical Examiner-Coroner sitehttps://mec.santaclaracounty.gov/office-medical-examiner-coroner
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Santa Clara County Office of the Sheriff — Office of the Sheriff · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Large multi-judge court; per the brief only the Presiding Judge and Assistant Presiding Judge are listed. Both were elected to a two-year term running 2025 through 2026, beginning January 1, 2025. Commissioners who handle arraignment and bail calendars are not individually named in the announcement.
- 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 Custody Bureau page links a 'Who's in jail?' inmate locator at eservices.sccgov.org.
- The jail population page states the Current Daily Jail Population Report is 'temporarily unavailable' pending data review in the new In-Custody Records Information System (IRIS); a PowerBI dashboard covering daily population 2021-2025 remains embedded.
- Twelve PREA audit reports from 2014 through 2025 are posted on the Sheriff's PREA page.
- The BSCC 2020-2022 biennial inspection (conducted May 17-21, 2021, by field representative Michael J. Bush) covered the Main Jail, both Elmwood facilities, the Hall of Justice Court Holding and the Family Justice Center. It found noncompliance with Title 15 §1081 (inmate discipline), Title 15 §1058 (restraint devices), Title 24 §1231.2.6 (Main Jail cell ceiling height reduced to 7'6" by ADA modifications) and Title 24 §1231.2.8 (Elmwood Men's dormitory floor space). Requested exemptions were denied.
- Fees: the county's commissary page states only that 'the cost of commissary items is comparable to convenience store pricing' and publishes no price list, phone rate or video visit rate.
- Contracts: no county-published agreement to hold another agency's prisoners, with or without rates, was located.
- Bail: the Administrative Booking page explains cash bail at the jail cashier's window (cash, cashier's check, money order payable to Santa Clara County Judicial District, or bail bond), available 5:00 a.m. to midnight. A separate 'Request Bail Board Posting' link on the Custody Services page returned a 404.
- Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district.
What California law requires
Santa Clara County posts a death-in-custody page.
Posts 7 of 7The page is here. A standing page in the Sheriff's transparency portal titled 'In-Custody Deaths' states the office 'is required to post specific information, within 10 days, whenever a subject dies in our custody' in compliance with AB 2761 and Penal Code 10008. It lists 13 entries from 2023 to 2026 as links to individual PC 10008 report PDFs and press releases; the index page itself shows only a case name and date. The PC 10008 report form carries all seven statutory headings.
- ✓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
54 people have died in the Santa Clara 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 Santa Clara 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 Santa Clara 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