The Detention Center
Penobscot County Jail
- Operated byPenobscot County Sheriff's Office
- Who runs itCaptain Chris Boulier — Jail Administrator, Penobscot County Jail (Assistant Jail Administrators: Lt. Jason Raymond and Lt. Allen Avery), 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 address85 Hammond Street, Bangor, ME 04401 — on the Penobscot County Government Campus; (207) 947-4585
- State-rated capacity157
- Contingency statusThe county says the jail 'has been in contingency status for years due to overcrowding, despite numerous jail diversion initiatives'
- Average daily population 2024329 total — 161 held at the jail, 66 boarded out to other facilities, 102 monitored through pretrial services
- Pretrial share88% of those held at the jail are pretrial
- BookingsAbout 4,200 a year; the jail provides regional booking for every state, county and municipal agency in Penobscot County
- Who it holdsMen and women at minimum, medium and maximum custody; pretrial detainees and people serving felony sentences of nine months or less or misdemeanour sentences of 364 days or less
- RenovationThe building's renovation was completed in 1988; the county is now publishing plans, floor plans, site plans and executive summaries for a new correctional facility
- State inspectionInspected 11–12 August 2025: 100% of the 145 mandatory standards and 100% of the 95 desirable standards for a full-service jail
- Largest in the northThe county calls it the largest county correctional facility in northern Maine
Source: Penobscot County Sheriff's Office — Facility Information · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
6/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓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 — 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 — the county publishes only that the jail's renovation was completed in 1988
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds157 (state-rated capacity)
Since then
- Renovation completed 1988
- A new correctional facility is in planning — the county publishes floor plans, proposed site plans, a program document, an executive summary dated 5 November 2018 and a Jail Committee final report dated February 2019
The Sheriff
Sheriff Troy J. Morton
- 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 2014, took office January 2015; over 36 years with the Penobscot County Sheriff's Office, beginning in corrections and rising to Chief Deputy
- Office85 Hammond Street, Bangor, ME 04401; (207) 947-4585
- Chief DeputyJohn Knappe
- Other rolesVice President of the Maine Sheriffs' Association and a member of its Legislative Committee
- ScaleThe jail is the largest division of the office and employs two-thirds of its workforce
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Penobscot County Sheriff's Office — Meet the 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. 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.
Bangor District Court at the Penobscot Judicial Center, 78 Exchange Street, Bangor — the principal District Court serving Penobscot County (Clerk: Diana Durgin)
- Hon. Amy Faircloth
- Hon. Harris A. Mattson
- Hon. Raphaelle Silver
- Hon. Meghan Szylvian
- Hon. Katherine M. Dufour (178 Exchange Street, Bangor)
- Hon. Gregory Campbell (active retired)
- Hon. Michael P. Roberts (active retired)
Newport District Court — temporarily relocated to the Penobscot Judicial Center, 78 Exchange Street, Bangor, until further notice (Clerk: Chris-Anne Brown)
- Roster not published for this location
Lincoln District Court, 52 Main Street, Lincoln, and Millinocket District Court, 207 Penobscot Avenue, Millinocket — the county's northern District Court locations (Clerk: Katherine Ward)
- Roster not published for these locations
Penobscot County Superior Court at the Penobscot Judicial Center, 78 Exchange Street, Bangor (Clerk: Diana Durgin)
- Hon. Bruce C. Mallonee
- Hon. Ann M. Murray
- 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
- Penobscot is the most transparent county in this group: it publishes a live in-custody roster, a state-rated capacity, average daily population broken into in-house, boarded-out and pretrial-monitored counts, an annual PREA report, six years of Board of Visitors annual reports (2020–2025) and separate jail budgets.
- Inspections marked yes on the Board of Visitors annual reports — the citizen oversight panel required by Maine statute, appointed by the sheriff. The county does not separately publish the Maine DOC standards inspection, which scored 100% mandatory and 100% desirable on 11–12 August 2025.
- Bond info marked no: the page titled 'Inmate Bail' explains that bail questions are answered through a Securus automated information line at (207) 922-3898 and lists other phone numbers. It does not say how, where or when bail is posted, what forms of payment are taken, or what the bail commissioner's fee is. The 20-page inmate rule book, also published, does not mention bail.
- Fees marked no: the Phone & Video Visits page links to Securus product pages and the commissary page explains deposits and a $15 stop-payment fee, but no call, video-visit or commissary prices are published.
- Contracts marked no: 66 Penobscot inmates a day were boarded out in 2024, but no boarding agreement or per-diem rate is published.
- Deaths marked no: the 2025 Maine DOC Report on Jails records no Penobscot in-custody death review for November 2024 to September 2025, and the county publishes no death-in-custody record either way.
- Three county commissioners elected by district to four-year terms: District 1 Daniel J. Tremble of Bangor, District 2 Andre E. Cushing III of Newport (Chair), District 3 David S. Marshall of Millinocket. The Board meets at 10:00 a.m. on the first and third Wednesday of each month at 97 Hammond Street, Bangor. The commissioners prepare and monitor the county budget, but a county Budget Committee makes the final decision — 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 Penobscot 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