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

The Detention Center

Shasta County Jail

Operated byShasta County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameYes — Shasta County Jail
Jail address1655 West Street, Redding
Beds as published484 total — 404 male, 80 female
Video visitation60 minutes per week free to all incarcerated people
CommissaryUp to $100 of goods per week; no price list published
Rated capacity484 beds

Source: Shasta County — Shasta County Jail · 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 Shasta 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
Beds484 as published by the county — 404 male, 80 female. State rated capacity for the Shasta County Main Jail is also 484.

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Michael L. Johnson

Title as publishedSheriff
Coroner functionThe Coroner's Office is a unit of the Shasta County Sheriff's Office, managed by a lieutenant
Took officeAppointed Shasta County Sheriff July 27, 2021; won election in 2022

Still needed

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

Source: Shasta County — Sheriff's Office directory listing: Michael L. Johnson · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

The court's Administration page names only the Presiding Judge and states the bench comprises eleven judges and two commissioners; it does not name an Assistant Presiding Judge and does not name the commissioners, who in California typically handle arraignment and bail calendars.

Superior Court of California, County of Shasta — Presiding Judge

Tamara Wood

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

Capacity marked 'no' because the county publishes bed counts but no daily or average jail population figure was found on any county site.
The In Custody page links the Sheriff's Office in-custody search at incustody.shastasheriff.com.
Bail: the jail page explains posting bail in exact currency, personal check up to $1,000, cashier's check or money order payable to Shasta County Superior Court at the jail reception area, or through a bail bond agency.
Fees: free 60-minute weekly video visits and a $100 weekly commissary spending cap are published, but no phone rate, video visit rate or commissary price list.
No BSCC inspection report for the Shasta County Jail was found on any county site, and none was reachable through the BSCC's own inspection report index.
The Shasta County Civil Grand Jury published a 2024-2025 report on the jail examining five in-custody deaths in a 13-month period (https://www.shastacounty.gov/media/71031). It is an investigation of those deaths rather than a facility inspection, so it is not counted under the inspections check.
Contracts: no county-published agreement to hold another agency's prisoners, with or without rates, was located.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district, serving staggered four-year terms.

What California law requires

Shasta County posts a death-in-custody page.

Posts 7 of 7

The page is here. A dedicated county page titled 'Shasta County Jail In-Custody Death Reporting' states the information 'is being provided in response to the passage of California Assembly Bill 2761, which took effect on January 1, 2023.' It lists nine deaths from December 2023 through January 2026, each with agency, county, facility and the specific housing unit or cell, decedent name, age, gender, race, custodial status, and manner and cause of death — four of the most recent entries show manner and cause as pending determination.

✓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

32 people have died in the Shasta County jail since 2016.

14 by suicide

8 illness or medical

32 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them28 of 32

Most recent death on the state's record2025-10-26

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 Shasta 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 Shasta 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