The Detention Center
Crook County Jail
- Operated byCrook County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- Jail address308 NE 2nd Street, Prineville, OR 97754 — 541-416-3620; the jail sits in the Crook County Justice Center / Public Safety Center
- Size86 beds
- OpenedAugust 5, 2019 — the county credits 'the citizens of Crook County' for the new facility
- StaffTwenty-six corrections personnel led by Lieutenant Andrew Rasmussen, Jail Commander
- Who it holdsMainly pre-sentence detainees, people sentenced to the supervisory authority, and people serving parole or probation sanctions
- VendorsSmart Communications for inmate phones; deposits through JailATM.com or a lobby kiosk — no rates published
Source: Crook County — Jail · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓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 — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built2019 — the county says the new facility opened August 5, 2019
- Original costNot found — checked the Jail page, the Sheriff's Office pages, the county budget page and the county site's own search
- Paid for byNot found — the county says only that the facility exists 'thanks to the citizens of Crook County', which implies a voter-approved measure, but no measure, bond amount or tax rate is published on the county site
- Beds86
Since then
- Not found — the 2019 building is itself the replacement facility
The Sheriff
Sheriff John Gautney
- Runs the jailYes — the Crook County Jail is a division of the Sheriff's Office, under a jail commander who reports to the sheriff
- How the office is filledElected countywide; sworn in December 31, 2015 after the retirement of Sheriff Jim Hensley, having served as Undersheriff from January 3, 2011
- BackgroundJoined the Crook County Sheriff's Office in April 1985, spent 16 and a half years with Bend Police including as commander of the Central Oregon Drug Enforcement Team, and returned to the Sheriff's Office in 2011; 2007 graduate of the FBI National Academy
- Office260 NW 2nd Street, Suite 100, Prineville, OR 97754 — 541-447-6398
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Oregon State Sheriffs' Association — Crook County · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Oregon Circuit Court judges are elected in nonpartisan races and are state judicial officers, not county officials. The 22nd Judicial District covers Crook and Jefferson counties; two elected judges sit in Crook County, one of them the presiding judge. A judge, not the sheriff, sets security amounts and release conditions.
Crook County Circuit Court — 22nd Judicial District, 260 NW 2nd Street, Suite 300, Prineville (moved there effective October 28, 2024)
- Wade L. Whiting, Presiding Judge
- Daina A. Vitolins, Circuit Court Judge
Justice Court — none in Crook County
- Not applicable — the Oregon Judicial Department's municipal and justice court registry lists no justice court in Crook 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
- capacity: the 86-bed figure is published on the jail page; no current or average daily population is published.
- roster: the Sheriff's Office runs a Web Jail Viewer at http://jail.crookcountysheriff.org/ with a booking search, carrying a public warning about how the data may be used.
- budget: adopted county budgets back to 2020-21 are published, plus a Budget-in-Brief, quarterly financial reports, financial statements and monthly vendor payment reports. The corrections appropriation sits inside the adopted budget document.
- bond_info: the Depositing Funds page says only 'To post bail online, please contact the jail at 541-416-3620'. That is a phone number, not guidance — no bail amounts, accepted forms of payment, hours or procedure are published.
- fees: Smart Communications is named as the phone provider and JailATM.com and a lobby kiosk as the deposit routes, and the county says each person gets two free booking calls of up to 15 minutes, but no per-minute or commissary rate is published.
- prea: no PREA page, policy statement, report or audit was found anywhere on the county site.
- deaths and contracts: nothing published on either.
- 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/).
- Crook County is governed by a three-member Board of Commissioners — Seth Crawford, Susan Hermreck and Brian Barney — at 300 NE 3rd Street, Prineville. Until recently the body was styled the Crook County Court, and the older minutes on the county website still carry that name. Agendas, packets and minutes are published through a separate Granicus portal. No jail district and no dedicated jail tax were found.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Crook 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 county clerk runs the election in Crook 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