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

The Detention Center

UNKNOWN as written by the county - the county's sheriff page names no facility; the state calls it the McCurtain County Detention Facility and the state report quotes a 'McCurtain County Jail Safety, sanitary and hygiene policy'

Operated byMcCurtain County Sheriff's Office (inferred; see notes)
Name used by the state (OSDH)McCurtain County Detention Facility (provider ID DET-080)
Policy title quoted in the state reportMcCurtain County Jail Safety, sanitary and hygiene policy
Jail address on OSDH inspection report200 N Central, Idabel, OK 74745
Sheriff's Office address on county site2001 Industrial Parkway, Idabel, OK 74745 (a different address from the jail)
Census at last state inspection97 (October 27, 2025)
Last state inspection outcomeNot in substantial compliance; violations cited, including a razor-control finding under 74 O.S. Sec. 192.3(A)(2) (10/27/2025)
State inspectionOklahoma inspects this jail. Read the state report →

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

Transparency rating

2/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗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 — not published
✓Phone, video and commissary rates

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what McCurtain 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

The Sheriff

Sheriff Bruce Shirey

NoteThe county writes 'Bruce Shirey, Sheriff, In office since January 2, 2025'. The Oklahoma State Election Board 2024 Roster lists 'Bruce W. Shirey, R, Broken Bow', i.e.

Still needed

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

Source: McCurtain 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 17

District Judge Emily Maxwell (McCurtain County Courthouse)
Associate District Judge Tim T Ragland (McCurtain County)
Special Judge Laurie Blevins (McCurtain County)
Special Judge Mark Uptegrove (McCurtain County)

McCurtain County Courthouse, 108 N Central Avenue, Idabel, OK 74745 (court clerk listed in all caps as 'KATHY GRAY', P.O. Box 1378, Idabel, OK 74745)

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

CONTROVERSY HANDLING: McCurtain County's sheriff's office has been the subject of widely reported controversy. Nothing here repeats any allegation.
DEAD SITE: mccurtaincountysheriff.com resolves to a parked-domain lander with no content. The Sheriff's Office has no working website of its own; the only official web presence is the county's OKCounties.org page.
UNUSUAL OMISSION: unlike every other OKCounties.org county sheriff page in this group (Love, Marshall, Mayes, McIntosh), McCurtain's sheriff page does NOT list 'Has power and authority to operate the County Jail' among the office's duties.
The jail (200 N Central) is at a different address from the Sheriff's Office (2001 Industrial Parkway) and from the courthouse (108 N Central).
No public trust or jail authority found for McCurtain County.
The county does NOT publish inspection reports itself. No county-published roster, no capacity figure, no PREA policy, no in-custody death reporting, no bond schedule and no jail contracts (its /bids page lists only vehicle and six-month supply bids, most recently 2023).
No combined board page; commissioner districts 1-3 are listed separately under /offices. The county publishes filed BOCC and Excise Board agendas as PDFs under /file/meetings/.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in McCurtain 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 McCurtain 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