The Detention Center
Franklin County Detention Center
- Operated byFranklin County Sheriff's Office
- Who runs itHart Daley — Major, Jail Administrator, Franklin County Detention Center (Assistant Jail Administrator: Lt. John Donald), appointed by the The elected Sheriff — Maine has no commissioner-appointed jail superintendent; Major Daley took the role in 2025
- Jail address121 County Way, Farmington, ME 04938; (207) 778-3032
- OpenedApril 1983, per the county's own Inmate Handbook
- FY2027 jail budget$4,086,418 (Department 100 - Jail), up 15.5% from $3,536,649 in FY2026; jail fund assessment $3,346,418
- MDOC inspection 202596.6% of mandatory standards and 97.9% of desirable standards, inspected 3/4/25-3/5/25
- Grant fundingBureau of Justice Assistance COSSUP grant, $1 million over three years, funding re-entry, addiction medicine and staffing work
- RenovationMedical wing renovation bid and approved in fall 2024, construction expected to start spring 2025
- BedsNot found — no bed count or rated capacity is published; the Inmate Handbook, the FCDC general information page and the Board of Visitors reports were checked
- Policy accessNon-confidential policies can be obtained by writing to the Assistant Jail Administrator at $0.25 per page
Source: Franklin County Sheriff's Office — Franklin County Detention Center · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✓Independent inspection
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtApril 1983
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Medical wing renovation approved fall 2024, construction expected to begin spring 2025
The Sheriff
Sheriff Scott Nichols, Sr.
- Runs the jailYes — 30-A M.R.S. § 1501 gives the elected sheriff custody and charge of the jail
- Office120 County Way, Suite 1, Farmington, ME 04938; (207) 778-2680
- ContinuityThe office states it has served the county since 1838
- Created the Board of VisitorsYes — the county's own page says no Board of Visitors existed at the jail until Sheriff Nichols recruited volunteers, and that he widened its remit beyond the statutory minimum of mental health services to all jail services
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Franklin County Sheriff's Office · 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 Franklin County appears on any county ballot — a real difference from Texas and Oklahoma. Franklin is small enough that the Judicial Branch stations only one District Court judge here and no resident Superior Court justice at all. Out-of-hours bail is set by Judicial Branch bail commissioners, who charge a fee on top of the bail amount.
Farmington District Court (129 Main Street, Suite 1, Farmington)
- Hon. Tammy Ham-Thompson
Franklin County Superior Court (140 Main Street, Farmington)
- Not published for this location — the Judicial Branch Superior Court justice roster stations no justice at Farmington; Franklin County is covered by justices travelling from other counties
- 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
- Franklin County splits its web presence in two: county government at franklincountymaine.gov and the Sheriff's Office and jail at franklincounty.maine.gov. The county's own menu link labelled 'Franklin County Detention Center' jumps to the other domain.
- The Board of Visitors record is the strongest inspection trail in this group: published reports for July 2020 (report, letter and the Sheriff's written response), December 2021, 2022, 2023 and a 2025 Executive Summary. The 2025 summary names concrete priority areas, records the previous year's outcomes, and describes interviews with staff, contractors and inmates.
- Roster is marked no. The jail publishes Jail Intakes and Jail Releases logs with booking sheets and mug shots, which is more than most counties post, but a log of who came in and who went out is not a list of who is in custody now.
- No bed count is published anywhere. The Board of Visitors page refers to 'the 37 year old facility' in undated text, and the Inmate Handbook gives an April 1983 opening date, but neither states capacity.
- The Inmate Handbook states a PREA zero-tolerance policy, but no PREA annual report and no PREA audit result is published, so the PREA check fails.
- Bail guidance is clear and specific: the FCDC general information page sets out the whole in-person process, that cash is required for both bail and the Bail Commissioner's fee, and that the process takes at least an hour.
- Fees are marked no. The county publishes an Inmate Telephone Policy and Procedures PDF, but it contains no rates.
- The budget PDFs on the county site are hotlink-protected and return 404 unless requested with a referring page; a citizen browsing from the Budget Committee page will reach them, but a direct link will not work.
- Franklin County Jail was inspected by the Maine DOC on 3/4/25-3/5/25 and scored 96.6% on mandatory standards and 97.9% on desirable standards, per the 2025 MDOC Report on Jails. The county does not republish that result.
- Five county commissioners elected by district: Tom Saviello (District 1, term to 12/31/2028), Fen Fowler (District 2, to 12/31/2028), Tom Skolfield (District 3, to 12/31/2028), Bob Carlton (District 4, to 12/31/2026), Jeff Gilbert (District 5, to 12/31/2026). The Board meets at 10:00 a.m. on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 120 County Way, Suite 4, Farmington, and meetings are broadcast on MTBlueTV. A separate Budget Committee reviews the proposed budget.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Franklin 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