The Detention Center
Aroostook County Jail
- Operated byAroostook County Sheriff's Office
- Who runs itCraig Clossey — Commander, Jail Administrator, Aroostook County Jail (Assistant Jail Administrator: Captain Larry Goff), appointed by the The elected Sheriff — Maine has no commissioner-appointed jail superintendent
- Jail address15 Broadway Street, Houlton, ME 04730; (207) 532-7317
- Established1859, per the county's own Sheriff's Department page
- CapacityApproximately 117 inmates; described as a medium-security facility
- ThroughputOver 1,500 inmates annually
- Sentence rangeHolds pretrial detainees and sentenced people, generally under 24 months
- Jail fund budgetFY2026-2027 total jail revenues of $7,013,171, including $1,212,852 in state Community Corrections funding
- Daily populationNot found — no average daily population figure is published by the county
Source: Aroostook County Government — Sheriff's Department / Aroostook County Jail · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓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 — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1859 (established, per the county's Sheriff's Department page)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsApproximately 117
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Peter A. Johnson
- Runs the jailYes — 30-A M.R.S. § 1501 gives the elected sheriff custody and charge of the jail; the Aroostook County Jail is operated by the Sheriff's Office
- Office25 School Street, Suite 216, Houlton, ME 04730; (207) 532-3471
- Chief DeputyShawn D. Gillen
- Civil process fee$80 retainer per person or per service, under 14 M.R.S. § 702
- ContinuityThe office states it has served the county since 1839
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Aroostook County Government — Sheriff's Department · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Judges in Maine are state judicial officers, not county officials, and they are appointed, not elected. Superior Court justices and District Court judges are nominated by the Governor, reviewed by the Legislature's Judiciary Committee and confirmed by the Maine Senate, and serve renewable seven-year terms (https://legislature.maine.gov/doc/9335). Maine has a unified state trial court, so no judge who sets bail in Aroostook County appears on a county ballot — a real difference from Texas and Oklahoma. Aroostook is the only Maine county with two Superior Court sittings, at Caribou and at Houlton, and five District Court locations spread across nearly 6,700 square miles.
Houlton District Court (26 Court Street, Suite 201, Houlton) — the District Court in the county seat
- Not published for this location — the Judicial Branch district judge roster lists no judge stationed at Houlton
Caribou District Court (144 Sweden Street, Suite 104, Caribou)
- Hon. Carrie Linthicum
Presque Isle District Court (27 Riverside Drive, Presque Isle)
- Hon. Robert Langner
Fort Kent District Court (139 Market Street, Suite 101, Fort Kent) — also Madawaska District Court
- Not published for these locations
Aroostook County Superior Court, sitting at Caribou (144 Sweden Street) and Houlton (26 Court Street, Suite 201)
- Hon. Stephen Nelson (stationed at the Aroostook County Courthouse, Caribou)
- 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 is marked no because only one half of the test is met: the county publishes an approximate capacity of 117 but publishes no daily or average population anywhere on its site.
- Aroostook publishes a dedicated Jail Fund budget separate from the General Fund, going back to 2022-2023 — better budget granularity than most counties in this group.
- Aroostook maintains a public Contracts page listing contracts over $10,000, which is unusual transparency. It lists jail medical services and a NEPBA Local 601 corrections union contract, but no agreement to hold another agency's prisoners and no boarding rates, so the contracts check is no.
- The county links a live Inmate Information Portal (Zuercher) from its own site navigation, so the roster check passes.
- Fees are marked no because the county's own 'Sending Money to Residents' and 'Resident Communications' PDFs explicitly decline to state rates — they say transaction fees 'may apply' and 'can vary depending on the service used' and direct readers to Access Corrections, Securus and a Keefe kiosk. The vendors are named; no price is.
- No bail or bond guidance is published anywhere on the county site.
- The Sheriff's Office publishes its full policy manual through a public PowerDMS portal (https://public.powerdms.com/Aro7924/tree), which is more than most counties do, but that portal is a JavaScript application whose contents could not be enumerated, and a policy is not an audit or inspection result.
- Aroostook County Jail does not appear in the standards-inspection table of the 2025 MDOC Report on Jails, which covers inspections conducted November 2024 through September 2025.
- Three county commissioners elected by district to four-year terms: Paul J. Underwood (District 2, in office since January 2001, term expires 12/31/2028), William T. Dobbins (District 1, since January 2023, term expires 12/31/2026), Daniel V. Deveau (District 3, since January 2025, term expires 12/31/2028). The Commissioners' Office is at 144 Sweden Street, Suite 1, Caribou — not in the county seat of Houlton. The Board rotates its meetings among Houlton, Caribou and Fort Kent, and adopts a separate Jail Fund budget alongside the General Fund and Unorganized Territory budgets.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Aroostook 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.
In Maine your municipal clerk runs the polling place. Links from vote.gov and USA.gov.
Names verified 2026-08-23 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered