Delaware County, Oklahoma — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Delaware County Jail

Operated byDelaware County Sheriff's Office (Sheriff Ray Thomas; Jail Administrator Dakota Matlock).
Name the county/sheriff uses'Delaware County Jail' (heading on the sheriff's inmate-search page)
Name the STATE usesDELAWARE COUNTY DETENTION CENTER — OSDH provider ID DET-036
Address (state record)327 S 5th St, Jay, OK 74346
Sheriff's Office address322 S 5th St / P.O. Box 476, Jay, OK 74346 — 918.253.2700
Population at last state inspection81 (census, 08/18/2025)
Rated capacityNot found
State inspectionOklahoma inspects this jail. Read the state report →

Source: Delaware County — official source · checked August 21, 2026

Transparency rating

3/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✓Who is in custody
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
✗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
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Delaware County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked August 21, 2026. 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 Ray Thomas

NoteNamed on the Delaware County Sheriff's Office's own site ('Delaware County Sheriff – Ray Thomas') and independently on the county's ACCO/KellPro site at which also names Jail Administrator Dakota Matlock and Sheriff's Office email bynumj@delcosheriff.org.

Still needed

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

Source: Delaware County Sheriff's Office · checked August 21, 2026

The Judges

Oklahoma elects its district judges in nonpartisan elections. District and associate district judges set bond and decide who waits in this jail.

District Court, Judicial District 13

Hon. Jennifer McAffrey — District Judge, 13th Judicial District (chambers: Ottawa County Courthouse, 102 E. Central, Miami, OK 74354)
Hon. Dave Crutchfield — Associate District Judge, Delaware County (Delaware County Courthouse, P.O. Box 489, Jay, OK 74346)
Hon. Nicholas Lelecas — Special Judge, Delaware County

Delaware County Courthouse, P.O. Box 489, Jay, OK 74346 — District Judge line (918) 253-4329; Court Clerk Karma Sapp, P.O.

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 August 21, 2026

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

NAME INCONSISTENCY: the Sheriff's Office calls it the 'Delaware County Jail'; the Oklahoma State Department of Health registers the same facility as 'DELAWARE COUNTY DETENTION CENTER' (DET-036).
Delaware County has a working county website (delaware.okcounties.org, an ACCO/KellPro county site) AND a separate sheriff site (delcosheriff.org). The county site has no jail page of its own; all jail material lives on the sheriff's site.
The sheriff's Jail FAQ page is published but empty — it returns 'Oops! No Matching Answers Found.'
The county publishes no jail capacity, no budget document, no in-custody death log, no PREA information, no inspection reports, no detention contracts and no inmate fee schedule. The county 'Fees' page covers only Assessor and County Clerk recording fees.
The most recent state inspection (08/18/2025) found the jail NOT in substantial compliance — fire-alarm maintenance and a failure to provide a fixed usable bed. That report is published only by the STATE, not by the county.
No jail run by a public trust or authority here; operation rests with the elected Sheriff.
The Public Meetings page carries both agendas and signed minutes as PDFs (e.g. /file/meetings/bocc_minutes_8-11-26_2964.pdf) and is filterable by board and year back to 2014.

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

The sheriff is on your ballot

The county election board runs the polling place in Delaware County and prints the ballot the sheriff’s name is on. Links from the Oklahoma State Election Board and vote.gov.

Names verified August 21, 2026 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered