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

The Detention Center

Tehama County Jail (Main Jail)

Operated byTehama County Sheriff's Office — Custody Division
County publishes a jail nameYes — named and described on the Custody Division page
Jail address502 Oak Street (corner of Oak & Madison), Red Bluff, CA
Share of the officeThe Jail Division is the largest division and comprises about half of the Sheriff's Office personnel and budget
CommandCaptain Sherrill and Lieutenant Becker
Custody manual publishedhttps://tehamaso.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/RELEASE_20260819_T124009_Tehama-County-SO-Custody-Manual.pdf
Rated capacity255 beds across 2 facilities

Source: Tehama County Sheriff's Office — Custody Division · 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
✗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 — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Tehama 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 built1974
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsMain Jail capacity for 227 inmates as published; no daily population published

Since then

Additions completed in 1994

The Sheriff

Sheriff Dave Kain

Title as publishedSheriff — press releases are headed 'Dave Kain, Sheriff'
Also serves asCounty Coroner — in 2007 the Coroner's Office became the direct responsibility of the Sheriff's Office, 'creating the first Sheriff-Coroner of Tehama County'
Coroner's Office pagehttps://tehamaso.org/coroners-office/
UndersheriffJeff Garrett

Still needed

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

Source: Tehama County Sheriff's Office — Coroner's Office · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

The Tehama Superior Court website publishes no judicial officers or judicial assignments page. The Presiding Judge is identified from the signature block of the court's own standing orders effective January 1, 2026. No Assistant Presiding Judge and no commissioners are named in the court's published materials; pages checked were https://tehama.courts.ca.gov/general-information and https://tehama.courts.ca.gov/general-information/local-rules.

Superior Court of California, County of Tehama — Presiding Judge

C. Todd Bottke

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

Roster: the site's 'Current Inmates' page carries mail and deposit rules only. The Citizen RIMS / CrimeGraphics link on the home page is a crime map, not a custody roster.
PREA: a PREA notice and policy appear inside the published inmate handbook, but no PREA audit result or annual PREA report is published.
Fees: commissary and account deposit vendors are named (inmatedeposits.com, tehamacountypackages.com) but no phone, video visit or commissary rates are published.
Deaths is marked yes because one death in custody is published, as a press release; there is no standing section 10008 page.
The Sheriff's Office publishes annual statistical reports 2007-2025 at https://tehamaso.org/annual-reports/.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district.

What California law requires

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

No page found

No standing AB 2761 or in-custody death page exists. All 74 pages published through the site's own index were enumerated and its search index was queried for '2761', '10008', 'in-custody' and 'custody death'; the only in-custody death published is a press release PDF on https://tehamaso.org/press-releases/ — 'In Custody Death Feb. 24, 2023' (https://tehamaso.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/In-Custody-Death-Press-Banuelos-.pdf), naming Ruben Banuelos, age 37, who died at the Tehama County Jail on February 24, 2023 of an apparent pre-existing medical condition. That release gives the agency, facility, age, date and a preliminary cause; it does not state race, does not identify a location within the facility, and does not state custodial status in the statutory terms. A second release, 'In Custody Fentanyl Overdose February 5th, 2024', describes two hospitalisations and no death. Also checked: https://tehamaso.org/custody-division/, https://tehamaso.org/jail-services/, https://tehamaso.org/current-inmates/, https://tehamaso.org/annual-reports/. 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

7 people have died in the Tehama County jail since 2017.

2 by suicide

2 illness or medical

7 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them5 of 7

Most recent death on the state's record2025-10-18

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 Tehama 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 Tehama 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