The Detention Center
Cheshire County Department of Corrections
- Operated byCheshire County Department of Corrections
- Who runs itNicholas Phillips — Superintendent, Cheshire County Department of Corrections, appointed by the Board of County Commissioners (RSA 30-B:3)
- Jail address825 Marlboro Road, Keene, NH 03431
- County administrative address12 Court St., Keene, NH 03431
- Daily average population97 in house in 2024 (105 in 2023); 123 including community corrections
- Federal contract housingHolds U.S. Marshals Service detainees from Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island; 2024 average federal census 39.5 (VT), 1.1 (NH), 2.7 (RI); $1,663,725 charged for housing in 2024
- Predecessor superintendentDouglas L. Iosue signed the 2024 annual report; Nicholas Phillips now holds the post
- Bed countNot found — no design or rated capacity is published by the county
Source: Cheshire County — Department of Corrections · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
5/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✓Deaths in custody
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✓Who else it holds, and for how much
- ✗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 cost$37,000,000 correctional facility bond, 20 years at 4.2105767%, first debt-service year 2008, refinanced in 2017 at 2.112385% (2025 Delegation Adopted Budget, page 98)
- Paid for byCounty general obligation bond; total principal and interest scheduled at $52,111,739 through 2027
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Eliezer "Eli" Rivera
- Runs the jailNo — the Superintendent of the Cheshire County Department of Corrections does
- RoleCivil process, prisoner transportation, court security and public safety communications
- In officeSince 2013; the county calls him the 13th elected Sheriff of Cheshire County since 1879
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Cheshire County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Judges in New Hampshire are state judicial officers, not county officials. They are nominated by the Governor and appointed with the approval of a majority of the Executive Council, and hold office until age 70 — they are never elected. New Hampshire has a unified state trial court: the Superior Court and the Circuit Court (district, family and probate divisions) are state courts, and the county pays for and maintains the courthouse but does not choose the judges. The Judicial Branch publishes clerks and deputy clerks for each location but does not publish a judge roster per county, so no presiding judge is named here. Source for the appointment method: https://www.courts.nh.gov/our-courts/superior-court The New Hampshire Judicial Branch page for Cheshire Superior Court returned HTTP 403 on every attempt, so the Superior Court entry above is sourced to the county's own 2024 Annual Report instead of to the court.
NH Circuit Court — 8th Circuit, District Division — Keene (33 Winter Street, Suite 1, Keene)
- Not published per county — clerk and deputy clerk only
NH Circuit Court — 8th Circuit, District Division — Jaffrey (84 Peterborough St., Jaffrey)
- Not published per county
Cheshire County Superior Court, Keene
- Not published per county
- 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 marked yes: the county posts a dated PDF of the day's inmate list from the Department of Corrections page (the copy checked was Inmate-list-08-21-26.pdf).
- Deaths marked yes: the 2024 Annual Report's Safety-Security statistics table publishes a 'Death in Facility' line — 2 in 2023 and 0 in 2024 — alongside self-harm/suicide events (10 in 2023, 6 in 2024).
- Contracts marked yes with rates: the 2024 Annual Report's Federal Liaison/Transportation section states the county submitted an IGA application to raise the per diem rate for housing federal inmates from $105 to $120 per day and the transport rate from $30 to $40 per hour, and publishes $1,663,725 of federal housing charges and $81,985 of transport revenue for 2024. The 2025 Delegation Adopted Budget carries a Federal Inmate Reimbursement revenue line of $1,647,975.
- Capacity marked no: the county publishes daily average population (97 in house, 123 total for 2024) but no bed count, design capacity or rated capacity.
- Budget marked yes: the 2025 Delegation Adopted Budget carries department 4230 with TOTALS DEPT OF CORRECTION of $8,341,127. The 2026 Delegation Adopted Budget PDF is posted but yields no extractable text.
- PREA marked no: a site search for PREA on co.cheshire.nh.us returns nothing.
- Bond info marked no: a site search for 'bail' returns only the Sheriff's civil process fee page.
- New Hampshire has no state agency that inspects county jails and publishes the results the way the Maine Department of Corrections does under 34-A M.R.S. sections 1208 and 1402(13). No state or county inspection report was found for this facility.
- Three county commissioners form the executive branch (Skipper DiBernardo, Terry Clark and Claudia Stewart, per the NH Association of Counties). The legislative branch is the County Delegation of 22 elected state representatives, which reviews the proposed county budget, holds public hearings and votes the appropriations — the county's operating budget is the 'Delegation Adopted Budget'.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Cheshire 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 New Hampshire your town or city clerk runs the checklist and the polling place. Links from vote.gov and USA.gov.
Names verified 2026-08-23 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered