The Detention Center
Clatsop County Jail (the county also calls it the Clatsop County Detention Center)
- Operated byClatsop County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- Jail address1250 SE 19th Street, Warrenton, OR 97146 — jail phone 503-325-8641; the Sheriff's Office is next door at 1190 SE 19th Street
- Capacity148 adults, a cap the county says was set by the Clatsop County Board of Commissioners
- ThroughputAbout 2,500 people booked and released a year
- ReplacedA 60-bed jail in downtown Astoria that the county says first opened in 1980
- Phone / video visit / commissary vendorsNCIC Inmate Communications for video visitation; Inmate Canteen for commissary deposits — no rates published
- Other functionsDepository for all county warrants; runs an inmate work crew; provides public fingerprinting; answers the NAWAS weather and tsunami warning radio
Source: Clatsop County — Corrections Division & Jail · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
5/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓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
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found — the county documents the project in detail but never gives an opening date; the jail it replaced, in downtown Astoria, is described by the county as having first opened in 1980
- Original cost$23.8 million total estimated project cost, including design, permits, construction and contingency
- Paid for byA $20 million, 20-year general obligation bond authorised by Ballot Measure 4-195, approved by Clatsop County voters on November 6, 2018, at an estimated tax rate of $0.21 per $1,000 of assessed value; the county said the remainder would be covered by surplus state timber revenue
- Beds148
Since then
- Built by converting the former Oregon Youth Authority juvenile detention facility in Warrenton — the existing OYA building was to hold staff offices, intake, food service and 20 beds, with 128 beds in a new adjoining section
The Sheriff
Sheriff Matt Phillips
- Runs the jailYes — ORS 169.320 puts the sheriff in charge; the Corrections Division and jail sit inside the Sheriff's Office
- How the office is filledElected countywide in a nonpartisan race; sworn in January 3, 2020 as the 32nd Sheriff of Clatsop County
- Before becoming sheriffJail commander of the Clatsop County Jail; named OSSA 'Jail Commander of the Year' in 2018
- Office1190 SE 19th Street, Warrenton, OR 97146 — 503-325-8635
- Jail commanderLieutenant Tom Teague, named on the county's PREA page
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Oregon State Sheriffs' Association — Clatsop County · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Oregon Circuit Court judges are elected in nonpartisan races and are state judicial officers, not county officials. Clatsop County's judicial district has three elected judges, one of whom serves as presiding judge. A judge, not the sheriff, sets security amounts and release conditions; the county's own jail pages say bail may be posted at the jail or at the courthouse for Circuit Court cases.
Clatsop County Circuit Court — 18th Judicial District, Clatsop County Courthouse, 749 Commercial St, Astoria
- Beau V. Peterson, Presiding Judge
- Dawn M. McIntosh, Circuit Court Judge
- Kirk C. Wintermute, Circuit Court Judge
Justice Court — none in Clatsop County
- Not applicable — the Oregon Judicial Department's municipal and justice court registry lists no justice court in Clatsop County; the county's four municipal courts (Astoria, Cannon Beach, Gearhart, Seaside) are city courts, none of them a court of record
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
- Clatsop County is unusually open about why it built the jail: the project page publishes the bond measure, the tax rate, the total cost, the projected $5,206,900 annual operating cost, the growth from 31 to 37 corrections FTE, and its own figures on forced releases from the old 60-bed jail (https://www.clatsopcounty.gov/248/Clatsop-County-Jail-Project).
- roster: the county runs its own live roster at https://apps.clatsopcounty.gov/jail/, linked from the Jail Roster page, and says it also covers people on the work crew and electronic monitoring.
- capacity: the 148-bed cap is published, and the county publishes an approximate annual booking figure, but no current daily population count.
- budget: adopted county budgets back to FY2020-21 are posted as PDFs; the corrections and jail appropriations sit inside those documents rather than on a standalone jail budget page.
- prea: the county publishes a PREA policy statement and names the jail commander as the person to send reports to, but publishes no PREA audit report and no annual PREA data.
- fees: the county names NCIC for video visitation and Inmate Canteen for commissary deposits and links to both, but publishes no per-minute or per-item rate. It does post a 'Commissions Report Jan 2024 through May 2025' and a commissary bookkeeping document on the Corrections page.
- contracts: nothing found about holding other agencies' prisoners, and no rate.
- deaths: no death-in-custody notice or report found on the county site.
- state_inspection: Oregon has no state jail inspectorate. The Oregon State Sheriffs' Association publishes its voluntary OSSA Jail Standards and states that every Oregon sheriff has agreed to them and that each county jail is inspected on a bi-annual basis, but OSSA publishes the standards document only — no per-jail inspection result for this county was published on oregonsheriffs.org or on the county's own site (https://oregonsheriffs.org/jail-standards/).
- Under its home-rule charter Clatsop County is governed by a five-member Board of Commissioners elected by district: Mark Kujala (District 1), Anthony Huacuja (District 2), Pamela Wev (District 3), Courtney Bangs (District 4) and Lianne Thompson (District 5). The board sets the jail's population cap. Clatsop County has no jail district and no dedicated jail tax; the new jail was paid for with a general obligation bond and the county's transient room tax was raised to help cover the higher operating cost.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Clatsop 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 clerk runs the election in Clatsop County and prints the ballot the sheriff’s name is on. Links from USA.gov and vote.gov.
Names verified 2026-08-23 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered