The Detention Center
Cumberland County Jail
- Operated byCumberland County Sheriff's Office
- Who runs itTimothy Kortes — Major, Jail Administrator, Cumberland County Jail (Captain Dani Demers, operations; Captain Erik Frigon, administrative support), appointed by the The elected Sheriff — Maine has no commissioner-appointed jail superintendent
- Jail address50 County Way, Portland, ME 04102; (207) 774-5939
- SizeThe largest county jail in Maine
- Rated capacity570 inmates
- PopulationAverage daily population 388 in 2024; 420 inmates at the time the FY2026-27 budget was written
- Bookings5,501 total bookings in 2024, up 65% from 3,333 in 2022; average length of stay 13 days 8 hours
- StaffApproximately 140 corrections officers and civilians; 90 at the time of the FY2026-27 budget, with 25-30 corrections posts still unfunded from the 2022/2023 budget
- Age of buildingDescribed as 31 years old in the Sheriff's 2024 Annual Report, which places construction around 1993
- AccreditationPREA certified; accredited by the American Correctional Association (7th re-accreditation January 2023) and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care
- MedicalArmor Health under contract, with a built-in 3% annual increase; a medical wing expansion was due to finish in summer 2025
- Federal detaineesContract with the U.S. Marshals Service since July 2010; the 2025 Jail Board of Visitors report says the facility averaged over 100 federal detainees held for USMS and ICE during the 2025 reporting period
- Community Corrections CenterTemporarily closed and work release suspended as of the 2024 Annual Report
Source: Cumberland County Sheriff's Office — Corrections · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
7/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✓Deaths in custody
- ✓PREA audits
- ✓Independent inspection
- ✗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 builtApproximately 1993 — the Sheriff's 2024 Annual Report describes the jail as 31 years old; no construction date, opening date or dedication is published outright
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds570 rated capacity; average daily population 388 in 2024 and 420 at the time of the FY2026-27 budget
Since then
- Medical wing expansion, expected complete summer 2025 (2024 Annual Report)
The Sheriff
Sheriff Kevin J. Joyce
- Runs the jailYes — 30-A M.R.S. § 1501 gives the elected sheriff custody and charge of the jail
- Standing50th Sheriff of Cumberland County; first elected November 2010; joined the office in 1986
- Office36 County Way, Portland, ME 04102; (207) 774-1444
- Appoints the Jail Board of VisitorsYes — the citizen oversight board is appointed by the Sheriff under 30-A M.R.S. § 1651
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Cumberland County Sheriff's Office — Sheriff · 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 nobody who sets bail in Cumberland County stands for county election. Cumberland has the largest bench in the state — the Judicial Branch stations nine Superior Court justices and eight District Court judges in Portland, plus one District Court judge in Bridgton — and the county maintains the courthouse without any say in who sits in it.
Portland District Court (205 Newbury Street, Ground Floor, Portland)
- Hon. Peter Darvin
- Hon. Susan Driscoll
- Hon. Jed J. French
- Hon. Jennifer Nofsinger
- Hon. Jeffrey Wilson
- Hon. Peter J. Goranites (active retired)
- Hon. E. Mary Kelly (active retired)
- Hon. Keith A. Powers (active retired)
Bridgton District Court (3 Chase Street, Suite 2, Bridgton) — the second District Court location in Cumberland County
- Hon. Peter Malia
Cumberland County Superior Court (205 Newbury Street, Portland)
- Hon. Deborah P. Cashman
- Hon. Darcie McElwee
- Hon. Thomas McKeon
- Hon. Maria A. Woodman
- Hon. Roland A. Cole (active retired)
- Hon. MaryGay Kennedy (active retired)
- Hon. Nancy Mills (active retired)
- Hon. John O'Neil (active retired)
- Hon. Thomas D. Warren (active retired)
- 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
- Cumberland is the only county in this group that publishes a death in custody. The 2025 Jail Board of Visitors Annual Report states: 'During the 2025 reporting period, the facility reported one death in custody... the death was determined to be due to natural causes.' The report also says the Board reviewed mortality review findings. No death is reported on any Sheriff's Office web page — it is disclosed only inside that PDF.
- PREA transparency is real and deep: the county posts annual PREA reports for 2017-2023 and full PREA facility audit reports for 2018, 2021 and 2024, plus its PREA policy.
- A large share of the Sheriff's Office document links are broken. The site sets a
of the site root, so many href values resolve to 404s; the 2025 Annual Report link and several PREA links are dead as published. Working URLs had to be reconstructed. This is recorded because a citizen following the county's own links would not reach the documents. - Contracts is marked no even though the county says a great deal about federal boarding. The FY2026-27 budget states the U.S. Marshals agreement 'pays the County a per bed night fee for enhanced services for federal detainees,' recognises $750,000 in FY27 USMS inmate revenue and shows $1,549,500 of FY26 budgeted federal ICE boarder revenue being removed — but neither the contract nor the per-bed-night rate itself is published.
- The FY2026-27 Jail budget is $25,948,810, up 12.58% on FY2025-26, with $21,229,821 of that coming from taxes. The Sheriff's 2024 Annual Report shows corrections at 69.1% of a $30,186,850 office budget.
- Fees are marked no: the Inmate Funds page names Access Corrections and the deposit methods but publishes no phone, video visit or commissary prices.
- No bail or bond guidance is published on the Sheriff's Office or county site.
- Cumberland County Jail does not appear in the standards-inspection table of the 2025 MDOC Report on Jails covering November 2024 to September 2025; the Maine DOC does separately publish Cumberland County Jail PREA incident data at https://www.maine.gov/corrections/data/compliance.
- Five county commissioners elected by district to four-year terms, with a three-term maximum, under the county charter adopted in 2011: Jean-Marie Caterina (District 1), Tom Tyler (District 2), Stephen F. Gorden (District 3), Patricia Smith (District 4), James F. Cloutier (District 5). The Board adopts the annual budget as recommended by the County Manager and the Finance Committee; the county switched from a calendar-year to a fiscal-year budget cycle in 2022. Agendas and minutes run through a Legistar portal.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Cumberland 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