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 jailHood River is the second largest user of the four owners — 66 admissions and an average daily population of 20 in June 2026, and 20 people 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 built1999 — the Sheriff's Office says 'In 1999, Hood River County partnered with Wasco, Gilliam and Sherman Counties to form a regional jail'; Gilliam County's budget narrative dates the build to 1998 with completion in 1999
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byBuilt and owned jointly by the four member counties. Hood River's continuing share is a general fund payment: the county's FY2025-26 adopted budget shows NORCOR at 8.7% of general fund expenditures, $2,252,071
- Beds250 designed capacity at NORCOR (NORCOR PREA audit, November 2025). Hood River publishes no bed figure of its own
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Matt English
- Runs the jailNo — Hood River 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 keeps a 'Jail Information (NORCOR)' page
- How the office is filledElected countywide in a nonpartisan race
- In office sinceElected in 2012 as Hood River County's 9th Sheriff and began his first term on 7 January 2013; re-elected in 2016 and 2020
- BackgroundRaised in Sherman County, a social science degree from Southern Oregon University, began in 1998 with Hood River County Community Corrections as a parole and probation officer, transferred to the Sheriff's Office as a patrol deputy in 2000 and to investigations in 2009
- Standing2018 President of the Oregon State Sheriffs' Association and 2020 Oregon Sheriff of the Year; chair of Oregon's Board on Public Safety Standards and Training and co-chair of the Western States Sheriffs' Association public lands and government affairs committee
- Office309 State St., Hood River, OR 97031 — (541) 386-2098, 24-hour non-emergency (541) 386-2711
- Oversight role at the jailHe sits on NORCOR's Sheriffs' Oversight Committee and told the NORCOR board in July 2026 that the committee had been meeting on adult facility issues, contracts, policy and maintenance related to an aging facility
- How this was verifiedNamed on the county Sheriff's Office home page, in the Oregon State Sheriffs' Association biography, on NORCOR's adult corrections page and in NORCOR's board minutes of 16 July 2026
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Hood River 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. Hood River is in the 7th Judicial District, and two of that district's four judges have their primary office in Hood River County. The county established the Cascade Locks Justice Court in 1939 and its own page states the point plainly: justice courts are state courts funded by the county in which they sit and must abide by the county administrative code.
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
Cascade Locks Justice Court — 440 WaNaPa St, Cascade Locks
- Not found — the county's Justice Court page describes a full-time Justice of the Peace and a full-time Court Clerk but names neither
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
- Hood River County is one of the Oregon counties with no jail of its own, so this is recorded as a finding rather than a gap. The Sheriff's Office is candid about it and gives NORCOR's address and phone number.
- named: the Sheriff's Office keeps a page titled 'Jail Information (NORCOR)' explaining the four-county arrangement, so the check passes.
- bond_info: recorded 'no'. The county's answer to 'How much will it cost to bail someone out of jail?' is 'All release details can be answered by contacting NORCOR at 541-298-1576' — a phone number is not published guidance. NORCOR itself publishes a detailed bail page with the Telmate fee percentages, at https://www.norcor.co/adultcorrections/bail-information
- roster and capacity: the county publishes neither, and directs readers to NORCOR's website for both visiting hours and who is in custody.
- budget: the county publishes adopted budgets, budget committee packets and its audited financial statements. The FY2025-26 adopted budget carries a Sheriff's Office - NORCOR programme (fund 101-4802) with its own revenue lines for SCAAP and NORCOR reimbursement and a court assessment to the general fund jail account, alongside separate general fund sections for Sheriff Adult Corrections and Sheriff Jail Operations. The budget document read was https://www.hoodrivercounty.gov/vertical/sites/%7B4BB5BFDA-3709-449E-9B16-B62A0A0DD6E4%7D/uploads/FINAL_-_HRC_FY25.26_Adopted(1).pdf
- prea, inspections, deaths, fees and contracts: nothing published by the county on any of them.
- There is no jail district and no dedicated jail tax in Hood River County; the NORCOR payment competes with everything else in the general fund, which is what makes the 8.7% figure worth recording.
- 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.
- Hood River County is a home rule county under a voter-approved charter, governed by a five-member Board of Commissioners — a chair elected countywide and four district commissioners. The board appoints a County Administrator to run day-to-day business. Members are Chair Jennifer Euwer (term January 2025 to December 2026), Leticia Moretti (District 1), Arthur Babitz (District 2, term January 2025 to December 2028), Ed Weathers (District 3, term January 2023 to December 2026) and Chad Muenzer (District 4, appointed, January 2025 to December 2028). Meetings are on the third Monday of the month in hybrid format. Commissioner Ed Weathers is the county's member of the NORCOR board and was elected its Chair on 16 July 2026, so Hood River currently chairs the agency that jails its prisoners.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Hood River 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 Hood River 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