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California · County seat: Visalia · Checked 2026-08-23

Tulare County

The jail, the sheriff who runs it, and the judges who decide who sits inside. Every fact below comes from a named public record. Anything not yet sourced is marked still needed rather than guessed.

The Detention Center

Bob Wiley Detention Facility; Adult Pre-Trial Facility; South County Detention Facility

Source: Tulare County Sheriff's Office — Detentions · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Tulare 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.

Since then

  • Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Mike Boudreaux

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

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

The Judges

Large multi-judge court; per the brief only the Presiding Judge and Assistant Presiding Judge are listed. Both are named in the Court Leadership block on the court's home page, alongside Court Executive Officer Stephanie Cameron. Commissioners who handle arraignment and bail calendars are not individually named there.

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.

Notes on the record

What California law requires

Tulare County posts a death-in-custody page.

Posts 7 of 7

The page is here. A standing page under the Sheriff's Media section titled 'AB 2761 - In Custody Deaths' links eight individual reports dated 1/11/23, 6/5/23, 6/7/23, 5/11/24, 7/21/24, 4/18/25, 6/11/25 and 8/3/25. Each report is laid out against the statute's five numbered headings and supplies the agency (Tulare County Sheriff's Office), date with manner and means, county and facility, race, gender and age, and custodial status. Two gaps are visible in the entries read: the facility is named but no location within the facility is given (for example '8-03-25 ... Tulare County / South County Detention Facility'), and the custodial status field is answered with the booking charges rather than with the statutory categories of awaiting arraignment, awaiting trial or incarcerated.

  • 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

28 people have died in the Tulare County jail since 2016.

8 by suicide
12 illness or medical
28 deaths in all, 2016 onward
Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them22 of 28
Most recent death on the state's record2025-08-03

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 Tulare 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 Tulare 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