The Detention Center
Two Bridges Regional Jail
- Operated byLincoln and Sagadahoc Multicounty Jail Authority (shared facility — Lincoln County does not run a jail of its own)
- Who runs itCol. James Bailey — Correctional Administrator, Two Bridges Regional Jail (Assistant Correctional Administrator: Maj. William Frith), appointed by the The Board of Directors of the Lincoln and Sagadahoc Multicounty Jail Authority — not the sheriff and not the county commissioners alone
- Jail address522 Bath Road, Wiscasset, ME 04578; (207) 882-4268
- Shared facilityLincoln and Sagadahoc counties jointly own and fund it. The Authority was created by an act of 21 May 2003 under 30-A M.R.S. c. 17; the first board met 8 December 2003; a 12-member Board of Directors, six from each county, governs it under a 18 May 2004 operating agreement signed by both boards of commissioners
- OpenedConstruction completed and the jail opened in 2006 (SMRT physical plant assessment, May 2026). It replaced a small basement jail in Lincoln County and gave Sagadahoc, which had none, a facility
- Also holdsKnox County's long-term inmates from 1 January 2026 under a contract paying Two Bridges $293,450 a month
- Average daily population151.5 in 2025, 128.4 in 2024, 118.0 in 2023; projected ADP 147.1 in 2027 falling to 143.4 by 2039 (SMRT study)
- Pretrial share87% (2023), 82% (2024) and 84% (2025) of the population were pretrial
- Approved operating budget$8,910,542 in expenses for 2025 (Jail Authority approved budget)
- State inspectionInspected 9–10 April 2025: 100% of the 145 mandatory standards and 100% of the 95 desirable standards for a full-service jail
- Rated capacityNot found — no bed count is published. The Jail Authority pages, the 2025 approved budget and the 2026 SMRT physical plant assessment were all checked; the study works in average daily population and peaking factors instead of a rated bed figure
Source: Two Bridges Regional Jail — Jail Authority · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
5/10Partial- ✓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
- ✓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 built2006
- Original costNot found — the counties bonded jointly for construction but no figure is published
- Paid for byJoint bond issue by Lincoln and Sagadahoc counties, repaid through county property taxes apportioned between the two counties; boarding revenue from other counties and from the state Community Corrections Act supplemented operations
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Todd B. Brackett
- Runs the jailPartly — 30-A M.R.S. § 1501 makes the Maine sheriff the jailer, but Lincoln County's jail is operated by the Lincoln and Sagadahoc Multicounty Jail Authority, a joint board, not by the Sheriff's Office
- RolePatrol, civil process, court security and law enforcement for 19 towns; the Sheriff's Office moved out of the jail business when Two Bridges opened in 2006
- Office42 Bath Road, P.O. Box 611, Wiscasset, ME 04578; (207) 882-6576 / (207) 882-7332
- Chief DeputyRand E. Maker
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Lincoln 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. 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. At Two Bridges the bail commissioner's fee is $60, charged on top of the bail amount.
Wiscasset District Court, 32 High Street, Wiscasset — the District Court serving Lincoln County
- Hon. Theodore Irwin
Lincoln County Superior Court, 32 High Street, Wiscasset
- Hon. Daniel Billings
- 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
- Lincoln County does not operate a jail of its own. Two Bridges Regional Jail is shared with Sagadahoc County and governed by the Lincoln and Sagadahoc Multicounty Jail Authority; Lincoln's commissioners appoint half its twelve-member board.
- Inspections marked yes on the strength of an independent assessment the county itself published — the SMRT Architects and Engineers 'Two Bridges Regional Jail Physical Plant Assessment' of 13 May 2026, posted on the county homepage. That is an engineering and utilisation study, not the Maine DOC standards inspection; the county does not publish the DOC inspection result.
- Capacity marked no: the 2026 study publishes average daily population and bed-day totals but no rated bed capacity, and neither the county nor the Jail Authority publishes one.
- Budget: the Jail Authority publishes its approved operating budget (2025 expenses $8,910,542) and Lincoln County publishes county budgets 2016–2026 and audits 2015–2025 at https://www.lincolncountymaine.me/finance.
- Contracts marked no: Two Bridges has boarded other counties' prisoners since it opened and now holds Knox County's entire long-term population, but no contract or per-diem rate sheet is published on tbrj.org or the county site.
- Fees marked no: the FAQ explains that phones and tablets run through GTL/ConnectNetwork and gives customer-service numbers, but publishes no call, video-visit or commissary rates.
- The county also published a March 2024 Gale Associates site and structural assessment of the Sheriff's Office at 42 Bath Road, which records that the building was erected in the 1950s as a filling station, was renovated and expanded in 1985 to create the Sheriff's Office and jail, and lost the jail function in 2006 when Two Bridges opened.
- Three county commissioners elected by district to four-year terms: District 1 Evan C. Goodkowsky of Wiscasset (term to 12/31/2028), District 2 William B. Blodgett of Waldoboro (term to 12/31/2026), District 3 David Levesque of Newcastle, Chair (term to 12/31/2028). The Board meets at 9:00 a.m. on the first and third Tuesday of each month in the Hearing Room at the Lincoln County Courthouse, 32 High Street, Wiscasset, and streams meetings on the LCTV YouTube channel. Lincoln County has adopted the statutory county administrator plan; the budget goes first to a county Budget Committee. Jail governance is separate: the commissioners appoint six of the twelve Two Bridges directors.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Lincoln 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