The Detention Center
Kootenai County Jail
- Operated byKootenai County Sheriff's Office — Jail Bureau
- Address5500 N. Government Way, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83815
- Capacity451 beds housing 507 inmates (112% of capacity) as reported in the FY2025 Annual Report; two new pods (V and W, 56 beds each) received a Certificate of Occupancy in spring 2026, raising stated maximum capacity to 563 beds
- BudgetFY2027 Sheriff's Office budget request is $58.1 million (+11.8% over FY2026); the Jail's operating budget line increases $392,478, driven by Medical (+$210,655), Food Services (+$94,691), and Inmate Housing Supplies (+$23,270)
- StaffingJail Bureau: one Captain, two Custody Division Commanders, and roughly 80 total Deputy positions
- Bond infoBonding options published: a bonding company, cash bond via jailatm.com/Point and Pay from the inmate trust account, or cash/property bond through the Clerk of the Court; a $15 Sheriff's Bond fee applies per case number for Point and Pay/jailatm.com bonds (waived if bonded through the court)
- Phone/video/commissary fees60 minutes of free video visitation per week; additional video visits $0.20/minute; email $0.35/each; phone calls billed through vendor CTEL via prepaid or collect billing
- ProgramsWork Release Program (52 inmates sentenced to it in 2025) and a Sheriff's Labor Program (2,293 participants in 2025) let judges use community labor in lieu of jail time
Source: Kootenai County Sheriff's Office — FY25 Annual Report · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
6/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds563 (maximum, as of spring 2026); 451 beds with 507 inmates reported elsewhere in the same FY25 Annual Report
Since then
- V and W housing pods (56 beds each, 112 beds total) received a Certificate of Occupancy in spring 2026, raising the jail's maximum capacity from 451 to 563 beds — https://www.kcsheriff.com/DocumentCenter/View/1628/FY25-Kootenai-County-Sheriffs-Office-Annual-Report
- A new Court Hold facility (12 cells, up from 6) opened at the Downtown County Building in July 2025
The Sheriff
Sheriff Robert "Bob" Norris
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office Jail Bureau operates the Kootenai County Jail (Idaho Code Title 20, Chapter 6)
- How the office is filledElected; began current term January 1, 2021
- UndersheriffBrett A. Nelson
- Jail Bureau CaptainJeremy Hyle
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Kootenai County Sheriff, ID — Command Staff · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
Idaho has a District Court for the judicial district and a Magistrate Court. Magistrate judges are appointed by a district magistrates commission and then face a retention election; both are state judicial officers, not county officials. Kootenai County's District Court page confirms it is one of five counties in Idaho's First Judicial District (with Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, and Shoshone) but a search of the county's Clerk/Judge staff directory returned no named judges.
First Judicial District — District Court
- Not found
Magistrate Court
- Not found
- 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
- Commissioners identified from the county's Board of County Commissioners page: Marc Eberlein, Leslie Duncan, Bruce Mattare (https://www.kcgov.us/487/Board-of-County-Commissioners).
- The Sheriff's Office publishes its jail information on a separate agency site, kcsheriff.com, rather than the county's main kcgov.us site; both are the county's own official sites and were used as sources.
- No dollar figure for the cost of the V/W pod construction project, nor a year the original jail was built, was found published on the county's site.
- Board of County Commissioners
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Kootenai 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