The Detention Center
Oxford County Jail
- Operated byOxford County Sheriff's Office
- Who runs itMaj. Dana Dillingham — Jail Administrator, Oxford County Jail, 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 address26 Western Avenue, South Paris, ME 04281; (207) 743-5870
- Beds47 (Lewiston Sun Journal, October 2024 and June 2026)
- Downgraded in 2008The 2008 Maine Board of Corrections law reclassified four full-service county jails — Franklin, Oxford, Piscataquis and Waldo — as short-term detention facilities limited to 72 hours
- Restored in 2021The jail resumed full-service operation in September 2021 after commissioners hired corrections officers and let food, medical and inmate-phone contracts
- Closed again in 2024Closed March 2024 for an HVAC and electrical upgrade and ran as a holding facility only; the county paid about $664,408 through 31 August 2024 to board inmates at four other Maine facilities
- ReopenedMid-December 2024, target date 15 December; the upgrade was paid for out of American Rescue Plan Act money, with $420,000 of ARPA funds left to cover renovation and radio-tower costs
- Still boarding outThe FY2026 county budget carries $1,250,000 for Board of Prisoners; counties in the region pay $95 or more per inmate per day to board elsewhere
- Jail Fund FY2026$5,421,401 — the jail is the single largest share of the county budget
- Regional jail studyOxford is one of three counties, with Androscoggin and Franklin, in a 2025–2026 regional jail study; Oxford commissioners set aside $40,000 as a possible share without formally endorsing it
- Year builtNot found — no construction date is published by the county; the departments page, the sheriff's site, the jail HVAC/electrical project page and the 2026 budget workbook were checked
Source: Oxford County — Departments (Oxford County Jail) · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓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 — 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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byThe 2024 HVAC, electrical, security and camera upgrade was paid for with American Rescue Plan Act funds
- Beds47
Since then
- 2024 HVAC and electrical upgrade — jail closed March 2024, reopened mid-December 2024
The Sheriff
Sheriff Christopher R. Wainwright
- 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
- How he took officeElected November 2018, sworn in January 2019; on the ballot again in 2026
- Office26 Western Avenue, P.O. Box 179, South Paris, ME 04281; (207) 743-9554
- Chief DeputyJames Urquhart
- DivisionsPatrol (23 full-time deputies over 2,100+ square miles in three zones), Civil Process (about 2,700 papers a year), Corrections and the Regional Communications Center
- Stated goalWainwright's own office page says the jail has been a 72-hour holding facility 'for the past decade' and that he wants it returned to full service
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Oxford County Sheriff's Office — About · 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.
South Paris District Court, 26 Western Avenue, South Paris — the District Court serving Oxford County (Clerk: Michelle Racine)
- The Judicial Branch roster lists no judge chambered at South Paris; District Court judges sit there on rotation
Rumford District Court, 145 Congress Street, Rumford — the county's second District Court location (Clerk: Jennifer Merrill)
- Hon. Philip Mohlar
Oxford County Superior Court, 26 Western Avenue, South Paris (Clerk: Michelle Racine)
- No resident justice is assigned to South Paris on the Judicial Branch roster; Superior Court justices ride to Oxford County from other chambers
- 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
- Oxford County has the thinnest jail transparency of the five counties in this group. Neither the county site nor oxfordcountysheriff.com has a corrections or jail page: the only place the county names its own jail is a contact block on the Departments page giving the jail administrator's name, phone, fax and email.
- The Sheriff's Office site has no Corrections section at all — its navigation runs Home, Sheriff, Law Enforcement, Civil, Communications, About, Employment, Links, Privacy. No roster, no visitation page, no bail page, no PREA page, no fee schedule.
- The jail's own status is described inconsistently by the county: the Sheriff's About page still says it has been a 72-hour holding facility 'for the past decade', while the jail administrator's 2022 legislative testimony says full service resumed in September 2021 and 2024–2026 press coverage describes a 47-bed facility that reopened in December 2024 and still boards inmates out. The county publishes nothing that settles it.
- Oxford County Jail does not appear in the 2025 Maine DOC Report on Jails inspection table for November 2024 to September 2025 — the department inspects each facility every two years.
- The county does publish a dedicated Jail HVAC/Electrical Project page with bid requests, addenda, specifications and bid results at https://www.oxfordcounty.org/jail-hvac/electrical-project.
- Budget: the 2026 Oxford County Budget Workbook breaks out a separate Jail Fund ($5,421,401) including Board of Prisoners ($1,250,000), inmate medical and dental ($650,000) and State Jail Funding Distribution revenue ($967,234).
- Three county commissioners elected by district to four-year terms: District 1 H. Sawin Millett of Waterford, District 2 Lisa Keim of South Paris, District 3 Timothy Turner of Buckfield, Chair. The Board meets the third Tuesday of each month at 9:00 a.m. at 26 Western Avenue, South Paris. The commissioners — not the sheriff — decided when the jail closed for renovation and when it reopened, and they set the Board of Prisoners appropriation.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Oxford 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