Hillsborough County, New Hampshire — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Hillsborough County Department of Corrections

Operated byHillsborough County Department of Corrections
Who runs itJoseph V. Costanzo — Superintendent, Hillsborough County Department of Corrections, appointed by the Board of County Commissioners (RSA 30-B:3)
Jail address445 Willow Street, Manchester, NH 03103
Command staffSupt. Joseph V. Costanzo; Maj. Brian Martineau; Capts. Timothy Fitzpatrick and Jeffrey Duclos; Business Manager Marlene Montminy
Who is heldMale and female inmates awaiting arraignment, pre-trial and/or sentenced
GovernanceOperates under the direction of the Superintendent and the County Board of Commissioners
Bed countNot found — no capacity or daily population figure is published on the county site
Year built / costNot found — checked hcnh.org DOC pages (home, Administration, Operations, Command Staff, Security, PREA), the County Budget page and the 2025 approved budget PDF

Source: Hillsborough County Department of Corrections · 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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Hillsborough County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-08-23. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Brian Newcomb

Runs the jailNo — the Superintendent of the Hillsborough County Department of Corrections does
Title usedHigh Sheriff; described on the county site as the 30th Sheriff of Hillsborough County
RoleCourt security, service of civil process and law enforcement for 29 towns and the cities of Manchester and Nashua
Office329 Mast Road, Goffstown, NH 03045

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Hillsborough County — Sheriff's Office · 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 consent of the Executive Council, and 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. The county pays for and maintains courthouse space but does not choose the judges. The Judicial Branch publishes a clerk for each court location and does not publish a sitting-judge roster per county, so no presiding judge is named here. Appointment method source: https://www.courts.nh.gov/our-courts/superior-court

NH Circuit Court — 9th Circuit, District Division — Manchester (35 Amherst Street, Manchester)

Not published per county — the Judicial Branch lists Clerk Mary Barton and no judge

NH Circuit Court — 9th Circuit, District Division — Nashua (30 Spring Street, Suite 101, Nashua)

Not published per county — Clerk Sherry Bisson listed, no judge

NH Circuit Court — other Hillsborough district divisions: Goffstown (9th, 329 Mast Rd), Merrimack (9th, 4 Baboosic Lake Rd), Milford (9th, 4 Meadowbrook Dr), Hillsborough (6th, 15 Antrim Rd)

Not published per county — clerks only

Hillsborough County Superior Court North (300 Chestnut Street, Manchester) and South (30 Spring Street, Nashua)

Not published — the Judicial Branch page lists Clerks W. Michael Scanlon, Esq. (North) and Amy M. Feliciano (South) and no judge

Still needed

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

Budget: the County Budget page carries an 'Approved Budgets' file list rendered by script; the file list itself would not load, but the 2025 Hillsborough County Approved Budget PDF opens directly and shows department 4230 - DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS with a delegation-approved FY2025 total of $21,879,436. The 2026 approved budget PDF at the same folder path opens but is a scanned image with no extractable text.
PREA: the county posts an Audit Posting Announcement (notice that a PREA audit of the Hillsborough County Jail would be carried out the week of August 23, 2025 by certified auditor Jack Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald Correctional Consulting) at https://hcnh.org/Portals/0/Audit%20Posting%20Announcement.pdf and a one-page 'Website 2024 statistics' PREA data report (17 allegations in 2024: 10 staff-on-inmate, 7 inmate-on-inmate; 13 unfounded, 3 unsubstantiated, 1 substantiated) at https://hcnh.org/Portals/0/Website%202024%20statistics.pdf. No PREA audit report or findings are posted, so the check is marked no.
Roster / capacity / bail / fees: the DOC section of hcnh.org has no inmate roster, no bed count or daily population, no guidance on posting bail and no phone, video-visit or commissary rate schedule. Pages checked: DOC home, Administration, Command Staff, Operations (marked 'Under Construction'), Security, Programs, ACT Program, Health Services, Training, Directions and PREA.
Deaths: no death-in-custody notice appears on the county news or press-release pages; the DOC news category is empty.
New Hampshire has no state agency that inspects county jails and publishes the results the way the Maine Department of Corrections does. The only independent inspection of a New Hampshire county jail that is routinely published is the federal PREA audit, when the county chooses to post it.
Three county commissioners elected every two years from three county districts under RSA 28: Toni H. Pappas (Chair, District 1 — Bedford, Manchester, New Boston), Michael P. Soucy (Clerk, District 2 — Hudson, Litchfield, Nashua, Pelham) and Robert H. Rowe (Vice-Chair, District 3 — 24 towns). The commissioners supervise the Department of Corrections, but the money is voted by the county delegation: the 123 state representatives from Hillsborough County, who under RSA 24 appropriate the funds to operate the county through a 21-member Executive Committee. The FY2025 approved budget set the Department of Corrections (dept 4230) at $21,879,436.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Hillsborough 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.

These offices are on your ballot

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