The Detention Center
J.H. Dambacher Detention Center
- Operated byTuolumne County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes a jail nameYes — the Sheriff's Office has a dedicated Dambacher Detention Center division page
- Opened2021, replacing the previous county jail
- Size as published63,000 square feet; eight separate housing units
- Designed capacity as published230 inmates, male and female, multiple custody classifications
- Named forSheriff Jack Dambacher, the county's longest-serving sheriff (24 years)
- State facility recordBSCC facility 5958, Type II, in the BSCC statewide local detention facility list
- County website notehttps://www.tuolumnecounty.ca.gov/2071/Sheriffs-Office redirects to the Sheriff's own domain, tuolumnecountysheriff.com
- Rated capacity230 beds
Source: Tuolumne County Sheriff's Office — Dambacher Detention Center · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
5/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtOpened 2021
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds230 (designed capacity as published by the Sheriff's Office); eight housing units
Since then
- Replaced the county's previous jail; no later expansion published
The Sheriff
Sheriff David L. Vasquez
- Title as publishedSheriff (site header reads 'Sheriff David L. Vasquez'); homepage service block is labeled 'Sheriff Coroner'
- Also serves asCounty Coroner — the Sheriff's Office Civil/Coroner unit investigates reportable deaths, including deaths occurring in custody
- Coroner unit pagehttps://tuolumnecountysheriff.com/divisions/civil-coroner/
- Career note as publishedBegan in law enforcement in 2001 as a U.S. Marine Corps Military Police Officer; joined the Tuolumne County Sheriff's Office in December 2009
- Also listed byCalifornia State Sheriffs' Association directory, as 'David Vasquez', 28 N Lower Sunset Dr, Sonora
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Tuolumne County Sheriff's Office — Sheriff David L. Vasquez · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Four-judge court; all judicial officers are listed. The published assignments show Department 1 (Presiding Judge Krieg) hearing felony arraignments Monday afternoons and preliminary hearings Tuesday afternoons. The court announced on October 23, 2025 that Judge Krieg was elected Presiding Judge for the term January 1, 2026 through December 31, 2027 and Judge Gorman Campbell Assistant Presiding Judge for calendar year 2026 (https://www.tuolumne.courts.ca.gov/news/new-presiding-and-assistant-presiding-judge-elected). No commissioner is listed on the court's judicial assignments page.
Superior Court of California, County of Tuolumne — Presiding Judge (Department 1; felony arraignments)
- Laura L. Krieg
Superior Court of California, County of Tuolumne — Assistant Presiding Judge
- Hallie Gorman Campbell
Superior Court of California, County of Tuolumne — Judges
- David C. Beyersdorf
- Sarah J. Carrillo
- 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 check: the jail page publishes the 230-bed designed capacity and the Sheriff's Office homepage (https://tuolumnecountysheriff.com/) publishes a live 'Inmate Population' figure, which read 131 when checked.
- Budget check: the Sheriff's Office links a per-program OpenGov budget view labeled 'Dambacher Detention Center Budget Transparency' from the jail page, and a 'County Jail' view from its homepage.
- PREA: the Sheriff's Office publishes a Custody Manual (https://tuolumnecountysheriff.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/RELEASE_20251104_T154539_Tuolumne-County-SO-Custody-Manual.pdf) but no PREA audit result was found.
- Inspections: the jail page states the facility 'undergoes regular inspections by state and local regulatory agencies' but publishes no inspection result. BSCC reports are hosted by the state, not the county.
- Bail and fees: no bail-posting guidance and no phone, video-visit or commissary rate schedule were found. The jail page routes visitation to smartinmate.com and deposits to deposits.jailatm.com without publishing rates; the Records Division page publishes only a general records fee schedule.
- The Sheriff's Office also publishes a 'Community Reference and Accountability' page with SB 1421 personnel records, a use-of-force dataset and daily/custody logs: https://tuolumnecountysheriff.com/programs-services/community-reference-and-accountability/
- Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district. The 2026 Chair is Stephen A. Griefer and the Vice-Chair is Mike Holland.
What California law requires
Tuolumne County posts a death-in-custody page.
Posts 0 of 7The page is here. The Dambacher Detention Center page carries an 'In Custody Deaths' section that cites Assembly Bill 2761 and Penal Code section 10008, states the 10-day disclosure duty, and then lists '2025: None', '2024: None', '2023: None'. Because no death is listed, none of the seven statutory data elements appears. There is no separate standing AB 2761 page: the Sheriff's Office published sitemap (https://tuolumnecountysheriff.com/wp-sitemap-posts-page-1.xml) contains 34 pages and no other in-custody-death page, and the county site's Sheriff entry redirects to this domain.
- —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
2 people have died in the Tuolumne 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 Tuolumne 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 Tuolumne 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