The Detention Center
Kennebec County Correctional Facility
- Operated byKennebec County Sheriff's Office
- Who runs itCaptain Bryan Slaney — Correctional Administrator, Kennebec County Correctional Facility (Assistant Correctional Administrator: Corey Goodchild), appointed by the The elected Sheriff — Maine has no commissioner-appointed jail superintendent; 30-A M.R.S. § 1501 makes the sheriff the jailer
- Jail address115 State Street, Augusta, ME 04330; (207) 623-2270
- Average daily population140 incarcerated individuals (FY2027 county budget narrative, Sheriff's Office & Corrections)
- Adopted jail budget FY2027$14,461,881 (Dept. 1050 JAIL), of which $8,924,376 is salary and benefits
- Corrections staffFull 54-member correctional officer roster for the first time in years; jail overtime budgeted at $865,000 (Central Maine, 31 March 2026)
- Public rosterThe Sheriff's Office publishes a live in-custody list generated from the jail records system
- Death in custodyThe Maine DOC 2025 Report on Jails records a Kennebec in-custody death review for a death dated 3/08/25; the county publishes nothing about it
- Rated capacityNot found — no bed count is published by the county; the Corrections pages, the Corrections Mission page and the FY2027 adopted budget were checked
- Year builtNot found — no construction date is published by the county
Source: Kennebec County Sheriff's Office — Corrections · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓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
- ✗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 byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff L. Kenneth (Ken) Mason
- Runs the jailYes — in Maine the elected sheriff has custody and charge of the jail (30-A M.R.S. § 1501); day-to-day operation is delegated to a jail administrator the sheriff appoints
- RoleElected county sheriff; jail, patrol, civil process and court security all report to him. The FY2027 county budget states the Sheriff and the Chief Deputy split their responsibilities between the Law Enforcement Division and Corrections
- Residence listedReadfield
- Office73 Winthrop Street, Augusta, ME 04330; (207) 623-3614
- Chief DeputyJ. Chris Read, China
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Kennebec County FY2027 Adopted Budget — Elected and Appointed Officials (p.4) · 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. Maine has a unified state trial court: the Superior Court and the District Court are state courts that sit in county courthouses the county maintains, but the county does not choose the judges and cannot remove them. Unlike Texas and Oklahoma, no judge who sets bail in this county appears on a county ballot. Bail in Maine is also routinely set outside court hours by bail commissioners, who are appointed by the Judicial Branch and are not county employees; they charge a statutory fee on top of the bail amount.
Augusta District Court at the Capital Judicial Center, 1 Court Street, Suite 101, Augusta — the District Court serving Kennebec County
- Hon. Brent Davis, Chief Judge of the Maine District Court
- Hon. Erika Bristol
- Hon. Amy Dieterich
- Hon. David F. Hathaway
- Hon. Sean Magenis
- Hon. Rae Ann French (active retired)
Waterville District Court, 18 Colby Street, Waterville — the county's second District Court location
- Hon. Charles Dow
Kennebec County Superior Court at the Capital Judicial Center, 1 Court Street, Suite 101, Augusta
- Hon. Daniel Mitchell
- Hon. Michaela Murphy
- Hon. Harold Stewart II (active retired)
- Hon. William R. Stokes (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
- Roster: the Corrections page embeds a live in-custody list (KENNEBECJailQRY.html) showing last name, first name, booking date and inmate ID; 127 people were listed when checked.
- Capacity marked no: the county publishes an average daily population of 140 in the FY2027 budget narrative but never publishes a bed count, so the check fails on the 'beds' half.
- PREA marked no: the Sheriff's Office publishes a PREA third-party reporting form (machform id 31232) but no audit result.
- Deaths marked no: the Maine DOC 2025 Report on Jails lists a Kennebec in-custody death review dated 3/08/25, but that is a state publication, not a county one.
- Fees marked no: the Vendors page names Keefe Commissary and Securus Technologies but publishes no phone, video-visit or commissary rates.
- Contracts marked no: the FY2027 budget carries an 'INMATE BOARDING FEES' revenue line ($10,000 for FY2027) and a $5,000 'BOARDING OF PRISONERS' expense line, but no contract or per-diem rate is published.
- Three county commissioners elected by district to four-year terms: District 1 Patsy G. Crockett of Augusta (Chair), District 2 Joseph J. Pietroski Jr. of Winthrop, District 3 George M. Jabar II of Rome/Belgrade. The Board meets at noon on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 125 State Street, Augusta. The commissioners prepare the budget; it is finally adopted through a county Budget Committee of municipal officers — in Maine the county's state legislators do not vote the budget, unlike New Hampshire.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Kennebec 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