The Detention Center
Not named on the county's own site — referred to only as 'the Jail'
- Operated byWashington County Sheriff's Office
- Who runs itCapt. Rich Rolfe — Jail Administrator, Washington County Sheriff's Office, appointed by the The elected Sheriff (the sheriff is the statutory jailer in Maine)
- Jail phone published by the county207-255-3434
- Sheriff's Office / courthouse address83 Court Street, Machias, ME 04654
- Historic building at the same addressAn 1858 brick Italianate jail designed by Gridley James Fox Bryant stands at 83 Court Street, connected to the Washington County Courthouse by a later rear addition; listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988
- Beds / current year built / cost / fundingNot found — https://washingtoncountymaine.com/sherifs-office/ and https://washingtoncountymaine.com/contacts/ were checked and the county has no dedicated jail page
Source: Washington County — Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗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 for the current facility. An 1858 jail building by Gridley James Fox Bryant stands at 83 Court Street, Machias, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_County_Jail_(Maine))
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Barry Curtis
- Runs the jailYes — in Maine the elected sheriff has custody and charge of the county jail (30-A M.R.S. § 1501)
- Chief DeputyMichael Crabtree
- Office managerPaula Johnson-Rolfe
- Address83 Court Street, Machias, ME 04654
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Washington County — Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Maine has a unified state trial court. District Court judges and Superior Court justices are nominated by the Governor and confirmed by the Maine Senate for seven-year terms. They are not elected and they are not county officials — a real difference from Texas and Oklahoma. Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Judicial_selection_in_Maine
Machias District Court (District Court Region 7)
- Roster not published per county — the Maine Judicial Branch does not publish a judge roster for individual court locations
Calais District Court (District Court Region 7)
- Roster not published per county — the Maine Judicial Branch does not publish a judge roster for individual court locations
Washington County Superior Court
- Roster not published per county — only a statewide list of Superior Court justices is published
- 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
- 'named' scored no. The county's own site never gives the jail a name. The only jail references found anywhere on washingtoncountymaine.com are two lines on the Sheriff's Office page — 'Jail Phone: 207-255-3434' and 'Jail Administrator: Capt. Rich Rolfe'. There is no jail page, no corrections page and no jail entry in the county contacts directory.
- This is the thinnest jail disclosure of the five counties in this group: eight of ten checks fail.
- 'budget' scored yes on the Draft 2026 Budget posted by the county at https://washingtoncountymaine.com/images/draft-2026-budget-2/, linked from the Budget Advisory Committee page (https://washingtoncountymaine.com/policies/budget-committee/). The file is a scan with no machine-readable text, so the corrections line item could not be read and verified. A 'Budget FY 2024' document is posted on the same page.
- Commissioners' meeting minutes are published back to at least 2017 at https://washingtoncountymaine.com/policies/minutes/ and are the county's main written record.
- The 2025 MDOC Report on Jails records a 2/19/25-2/20/25 inspection of Washington County Jail scoring 99.2% on mandatory and 98.9% on desirable standards — but that is a state publication; the county publishes nothing about it.
- No inmate roster, no bail-posting guidance, no PREA audit, no phone/video/commissary rates, no death-in-custody disclosure and no boarding contract or rate are published by the county. All roster results for this jail are third-party aggregator sites.
- Three county commissioners, each serving a four-year term from one of three districts: Billy Howard, David C. Burns, Courtney Hammond. County Manager Renée Gray. A Budget Advisory Committee reviews the budget; Maine has no state-legislator budget delegation. MCCA's 2026 directory still lists John B. Crowley, Sr. in place of Courtney Hammond; the county's own pages are used here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Washington 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