The Detention Center
Benewah County Jail
- Operated byBenewah County Sheriff's Office
- Address701 W. College Ave, Suite #301, St. Maries, ID 83861 — co-located with the Sheriff's Office
- Rated capacity (ISA jail directory)16 rated / 12 average daily population
- Jail administratorLt. Clint Aldrich, per the Idaho Sheriffs' Association jail directory (not published on the county's own site)
Source: Idaho Sheriffs' Association — Directory of Idaho's Jails · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
0/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byCounty (Benewah County Sheriff's Office)
- Beds16 rated capacity — Idaho Sheriffs' Association jail directory (not published on the county's own site)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Anthony Eells
- Runs the jailYes — the Benewah County Sheriff's Office operates the Benewah County Jail
- How the office is filledElected; Idaho Code Title 20 Ch. 6 makes the sheriff jailer
- Office location701 W College Ave, Suite 301, St Maries, ID 83861
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Benewah County, ID — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
Idaho's District Court serves the judicial district (Benewah is in the First Judicial District, with Bonner, Boundary, Kootenai, and Shoshone counties — 22 judges total) and Magistrate Court judges are appointed by a district magistrates commission and then face retention election. Both are state judicial officers, not county officials.
Benewah County Magistrate Court
- Rachel Hamilton
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-24
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
- The county's Sheriff's Office page (benewahcountyid.gov/departments/sheriff) lists only contact information; no jail-specific content, roster, PREA, budget, or fee information is published there.
- An older county domain, benewahcounty.org, is still linked from some external sites and from the Idaho Sheriffs' Association directory (staff emails), but every interior page of that domain (departments/sheriff, /commissioners, /court, /elected-officials, etc.) returned a 404 error on the pages checked; the current official site is benewahcountyid.gov.
- Idaho has no confirmed statutory adult jail inspection agency; the Idaho Sheriffs' Association runs a voluntary jail standards/inspection program whose reports are not public.
- Benewah County Board of Commissioners — three members: Mark Reynolds (District 1), Scott Manes (District 2), Robert Short (District 3, Chairman)
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Benewah 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.
Names verified 2026-08-24 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered