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

The Detention Center

Pre-Trial Detention Facility (Ventura County Main Jail); Todd Road Jail; East County Jail

Operated byVentura County Sheriff's Office — Detention Services Division
County publishes jail namesYes — each of the three facilities has its own page under Detention Services
Pre-Trial Detention FacilityOpened 1980; houses approximately 890 sentenced and unsentenced inmates; over 250 employees; 800 South Victoria Avenue, Ventura
Todd Road JailOpened 1995 (30th anniversary marked in 2025); state rated capacity 796; over 185 employees; unincorporated area west of Santa Paula
East County JailBooking and housing facility at the East County Patrol Station, 2101 E. Olsen Road, Thousand Oaks; BSCC Type I
Bookings as publishedApproximately 23,000 people booked per year
State facility recordsBSCC facilities 5960 (Ventura County Main Jail, Type II), 6045 (Todd Road Jail, Type II) and 5980 (East Valley Jail, Type I)
Rated capacity1,739 beds across 2 facilities

Source: Ventura County Sheriff's Office — Detention Services · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

6/10Partial

✓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
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Ventura 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 builtPre-Trial Detention Facility opened 1980; Todd Road Jail opened 1995
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsPre-Trial Detention Facility approximately 890; Todd Road Jail state rated capacity 796; East County Jail not published

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff James Fryhoff

Title as publishedSheriff — the office is titled 'Sheriff', not 'Sheriff-Coroner'
Does NOT serve asCounty Coroner — Ventura County has a separate Medical Examiner's Office, a distinct county department (https://meo.venturacounty.gov/)
Medical Examiner scope as publishedThe Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office investigates suspicious, unusual, unnatural, sudden unexpected and natural deaths not under a physician's care, under Government Code section 27491
Also listed byCalifornia State Sheriffs' Association directory, as 'Jim Fryhoff', 800 S Victoria Ave, Ventura
Domain noteventurasheriff.org now redirects to sheriff.venturacounty.gov

Still needed

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

Source: Ventura County Sheriff's Office — Sheriff James Fryhoff · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Multi-judge court; per the brief only the Presiding Judge and Assistant Presiding Judge are listed by name, plus the three Superior Court Commissioners shown on the published judicial assignments page. The assignments page shows Judge Sabo on the master criminal calendar and preliminary hearings and Commissioner Nemerson on criminal misdemeanors; it does not label any single courtroom as the bail-setting calendar. The court publishes a fee and bail schedule at https://ventura.courts.ca.gov/forms-filing/fee-bail-schedules.

Superior Court of California, County of Ventura — Presiding Judge

Matthew P. Guasco

Superior Court of California, County of Ventura — Assistant Presiding Judge and Supervising Criminal Judge (Master Criminal Calendar, Preliminary Hearings)

Anthony J. Sabo

Superior Court Commissioners

Matthew R. Nemerson
Danielle S. Hall
Philip J. Bonoli

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 check: bed figures are published on the Todd Road Jail page (state rated capacity 796) and the Pre-Trial Detention Facility page (approximately 890); current population is published through the Sheriff's Booking & Demographic jail dashboard, linked from the Detention Services page and updated every 30 days.
Budget check: the County Executive Office publications page posts Adopted Budget documents from FY 2014-15 through FY 2025-26 plus an FY 2026-27 Budget Overview Report; Detention Services is described on the Sheriff's site as the largest division in personnel and budget.
PREA: the Sheriff's Office publishes a 'Reporting Inmate Abuse' page citing California Code of Regulations Title 15 section 1029 (https://sheriff.venturacounty.gov/inmate-information/reporting-inmate-abuse/), but no PREA audit result was found; the Policies and Required Public Posting pages list only the policy manual, public information plan, standard operating procedures, training materials and AB 481 items.
Inspections: the Detention Services page states that BSCC 'sets the standards' and that 'regular BSCC inspections are conducted', but publishes no inspection result.
Fees: the inmate phone, video visitation and commissary pages route users to Securus, JPay and Access-style vendors without publishing any rate; the video visitation page states only that 'there are charges associated with each facility'.
The Sheriff's Office runs a Transparency Dashboard covering crime and traffic, use of force, RIPA, hate crimes, human trafficking, SB 54 and jail booking/demographics: https://sheriff.venturacounty.gov/transparency-dashboard/
Ventura is one of the California counties where the sheriff is not the coroner; death investigations are handled by the separate county Medical Examiner's Office.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district. The Chair is Supervisor Jeff Gorell (District 2) and the Vice Chair is Supervisor Vianey Lopez (District 5).

What California law requires

Ventura County posts a death-in-custody page.

Posts 7 of 7

The page is here. A standing page titled 'AB 2761 REPORTING' reproduces the text of Penal Code section 10008 and then presents a table with columns Date of Death, Agency, County, Facility, Location of Death, Age, Race, Gender, Custody Status, Manner of Death and Means of Death — all seven statutory elements as separate fields. Three deaths are listed: 06/04/2023 (Todd Rd. Jail, Housing Unit C, 53, Hispanic, Female, Awaiting Trial, Natural), 11/09/2024 (Simi Valley Hospital, 70, Hispanic, Male, Awaiting Trial, Pending Investigation) and 01/24/2025 (Santa Paula Hospital, 69, White, Male, Sentenced, Pending Investigation).

✓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

27 people have died in the Ventura County jail since 2016.

4 by suicide

12 illness or medical

27 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them23 of 27

Most recent death on the state's record2025-01-24

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 Ventura 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 Ventura 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