The Detention Center
Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facilities (NORCOR) — adult jail
- Operated byNorthern Oregon Regional Corrections, an intergovernmental corrections agency owned jointly by Gilliam, Hood River, Sherman and Wasco counties and governed by the Northern Oregon Corrections Board
- Who runs itJoyce Orendorff — Jail Commander, Northern Oregon Regional Corrections (NORCOR) adult facility, appointed by the NORCOR management under the Northern Oregon Corrections Board — the four-county board of Gilliam, Hood River, Sherman and Wasco. She is not appointed by, and does not report to, any single county sheriff.
- Jail address201 Webber Street, The Dalles, OR 97058 — main office (541) 298-1576. The juvenile detention facility is next door at 211 Webber Street
- What NORCOR isNORCOR's own words: a regional adult corrections and juvenile detention complex serving four counties, 'setting a national precedent' when Wasco, Hood River, Sherman and Gilliam merged to develop it
- When it was builtGilliam County's own adopted budget narrative records that in 1998 Gilliam, Sherman, Wasco and Hood River counties came together and built a jail in The Dalles, and that NORCOR was completed in 1999
- Designed capacity250 beds — from the PREA facility audit NORCOR publishes on its own site (final report 6 November 2025)
- Population127 in custody on the audit date and an average daily population of 121 over the preceding 12 months; NORCOR reported no occasion over capacity in that period
- This county's share of the jailGilliam is the smallest user of the four owners — 8 admissions and an average daily population of 1 in June 2026, and 1 person in custody on 16 July 2026
- Who else it holdsWheeler County, which is not a member, contracts in — one Wheeler prisoner appears in the 16 July 2026 population count. The US Marshals Service is the largest single user: 49 average daily population in June 2026 and 43 in custody on 16 July 2026
- Governing boardOne elected official from each member county: Chair Commissioner Ed Weathers (Hood River), Vice-Chair Judge Joe Dabulskis (Sherman), Commissioner Grant Wilkins (Gilliam), Commissioner Jeff Justesen (Wasco). A Sheriffs' Oversight Committee of the four county sheriffs sits alongside it
- ManagementBusiness Manager Nichole Biechler, Jail Commander Joyce Orendorff, Detention Manager Todd Giesen, Finance Manager Monica Morris. No single post titled 'Administrator' is named in NORCOR's current board packets
- BudgetNORCOR's own approved budget for FY2025-26 totals $13,796,228 across all funds, against $13,061,088 adopted for FY2024-25
Source: Northern Oregon Regional 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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNORCOR was built in 1998 and completed in 1999 — from the county's own FY2026 adopted budget narrative
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byBuilt jointly by Gilliam, Sherman, Wasco and Hood River counties; Gilliam's continuing share is carried in the county's own budget. No construction financing figure is published by the county or by NORCOR
- Beds250 designed capacity at NORCOR (NORCOR PREA audit, November 2025). Gilliam publishes no bed figure of its own
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Gary Bettencourt
- Runs the jailNo — Gilliam County has no jail of its own. Its prisoners are held at NORCOR in The Dalles, which the county co-owns; the Sheriff's Office lists 'Jail' among its duties and links 'Regional Jail-NORCOR' from its own page
- How the office is filled'The Gilliam County Sheriff is a nonpartisan, elected position' — the Sheriff's Office's own words
- In office since2005 — he joined the Sheriff's Office as a reserve deputy in 1999, was hired full time in 2001, was promoted to Undersheriff in 2003 and became Sheriff in 2005
- Size of the office7 full-time deputies and a reserve deputy, and 11 team members in total according to the county's FY2026 adopted budget narrative
- StandingPresident of the Oregon State Sheriffs' Association in 2014, OSSA Sheriff of the Year 2017, Western States Sheriffs' Association Sheriff of the Year 2019-2020, and currently Secretary of the WSSA executive board
- Office221 S. Oregon Street, PO Box 685, Condon, Oregon 97823 — 541-351-9530. A second office, the Arlington Regional Office, opened 18 December 2024
- Oversight role at the jailHe sits on NORCOR's Sheriffs' Oversight Committee alongside the sheriffs of Wasco, Sherman and Hood River
- How this was verifiedNamed on the county's own Sheriff's Office page, in the Oregon State Sheriffs' Association biography, on NORCOR's adult corrections page, in NORCOR's board minutes of 16 July 2026, and signing the Sheriff's Department narrative in the county's FY2026 adopted budget
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Gilliam County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Oregon Circuit Court judges are elected in nonpartisan statewide-scheduled races and are state judicial officers, not county officials. Justices of the Peace are unusual: a JP is both a state court judge and a county elected official, elected to a six-year term, and the county pays for the court. A judge, not the sheriff, sets security amounts and release conditions; the sheriff's office only receives the money and releases the person. Gilliam County is served by the 7th Judicial District, which sits across five counties and is the same bench that serves Hood River. The county also runs its own Justice Court with sittings in both Arlington and Condon.
Circuit Court — 7th Judicial District (Gilliam, Hood River, Sherman, Wasco and Wheeler counties)
- John Wolf — Presiding Judge for the 7th Judicial District; primary office in Wasco County
- John A. Olson — primary office in Hood River County
- Karen Ostrye — primary office in Hood River County
- Marion Weatherford — primary office in Wasco County
Gilliam County Justice Court — courts at Arlington (500 W. 1st St.) and Condon (221 S. Oregon St.)
- Kari Hayter, Judge / Justice of the Peace
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
- Gilliam County is one of the Oregon counties with no jail of its own, so this is recorded as a finding rather than a gap: its prisoners go to NORCOR in The Dalles, an agency the county part-owns and whose board includes a sitting Gilliam County Commissioner.
- named: the Sheriff's Office page lists 'Jail' among its duties and services and links 'Regional Jail-NORCOR' under Useful Links, so the county does name the facility that holds its prisoners on its own site.
- roster, capacity, prea, bond_info and fees are recorded 'no' because the county's own website publishes none of them. All five exist on NORCOR's site, and the URLs are given below so a reader can find them.
- budget: the county publishes adopted budgets back to 2018-19 at the URL cited. The FY2026 adopted budget carries a Sheriff's Department narrative signed by Sheriff Bettencourt and a separate Gilliam-Wheeler Community Corrections fund. The line-item pages of that PDF are scanned images and could not be read as text, so no dollar figure for the county's NORCOR assessment is recorded here.
- deaths: nothing published by the county, and nothing on NORCOR's site either.
- inspections: no inspection or accreditation result is published by the county.
- contracts: the county publishes nothing about holding other agencies' prisoners. Gilliam is a purchaser of jail beds rather than a seller.
- The county's Justice Court publishes its own payment convenience fee — 4% or a $2.00 minimum for payments of $50.00 or less — which is a court fee, not a jail fee, and so does not count for the fees check.
- NORCOR publishes a great deal that neither member county repeats on its own website: board packets and minutes monthly back to 2024, meeting video and audio on Google Drive, budget packets and adopted budgets, external audit reports and management letters, a PREA facility audit report, a bail page, a phone page and a live adults-in-custody list. Those are recorded here as NORCOR's disclosures, with URLs, and the ten checks below are still judged on what the county itself publishes.
- NORCOR board packets and budget documents: https://www.norcor.co/norcor-board — the FY2025-26 adopted budget is at https://www.norcor.co/s/Approved-Budget-for-Website_61925.pdf and the most recent board packet read for this research was https://www.norcor.co/s/82026-NORCOR-Board-Packet.pdf
- NORCOR roster: https://norcor.net/adults-in-custody/ , linked from https://www.norcor.co/adultcorrections
- NORCOR PREA: a full independent PREA facility audit report, final 6 November 2025 by auditor Amanda van Arcken, is published at https://www.norcor.co/s/2025-NORCOR-sd8b.pdf — it is the source of the 250-bed designed capacity and the 121 average daily population recorded above.
- NORCOR bail: https://www.norcor.co/adultcorrections/bail-information gives four ways to post, and is unusually specific about cost — Telmate charges 3.95% of the total bail (minimum $3.95) in cash or 9.00% plus $9.95 by credit card, and the court retains 15% of a deposit posted directly to it, never less than $5.00.
- NORCOR phones: https://www.norcor.co/adultcorrections/phone-use explains that all calls are collect through Telmate and that deposits are taken through gettingout.com or the lobby kiosk, but publishes no per-minute rate.
- NORCOR contracts: the board packets publish monthly admissions, releases, average daily population and length of stay for each member county plus the US Marshals and courtesy holds, so the existence and size of the outside contracts is public, but no per-day rate is published.
- state_inspection: Oregon has no state jail inspectorate. The Oregon State Sheriffs' Association publishes its voluntary jail standards at https://oregonsheriffs.org/jail-standards/ but publishes no per-jail inspection result. NORCOR's own board minutes of 16 July 2026 record a CIS jail assessment summary that praised the NORCOR leadership team, but the assessment document itself is not published.
- Gilliam County is governed by a County Court, not a Board of Commissioners: a full-time County Judge and two part-time County Commissioners, all elected in nonpartisan races, the Commissioners to four-year terms and the Judge to a six-year term. The County Judge is also the county's day-to-day administrator and chairs the County Court, and holds probate jurisdiction. Members are County Judge Cris Patnode and Commissioners Leah Watkins and Grant Wilkins. The Court meets on the first and third Wednesdays, in Condon and then in Arlington, and livestreams by Zoom. Commissioner Grant Wilkins is Gilliam's member of the NORCOR board, so the county's voice in the jail that holds its prisoners runs through the County Court.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Gilliam 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 Gilliam 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