The Detention Center
The county publishes no formal facility name - its own words are 'a jail within the Courthouse'
- Operated byLake County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- Jail locationInside the Lake County Courthouse, 513 Center Street, Lakeview, Oregon 97630, at the corner of Highway 395 and Center Street
- Jail contactThe county publishes a dedicated corrections address, jsmyth@co.lake.or.us, on its Sheriff page
- Operation'Jail services are provided around the clock although inmate visitation is a narrow window.' Corrections personnel also run prisoner transport statewide and act as port of entry for out-of-state extraditions
- Cost of running it$1,164,714 adopted for the COUNTY JAIL programme in the 2018-19 adopted budget, of which $994,614 is jail personnel services - the most recent budget the county publishes
- What was triedThe county's Sheriff page, Business Department budget page, Community Corrections page and County FAQ were all read. No bed count, population figure, roster, bail guidance, phone rate, PREA result, inspection result or prisoner-housing contract appears anywhere on the county's site
Source: Lake County Sheriff · 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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byCounty general fund. The 2018-19 adopted budget carries COUNTY JAIL as a general fund programme (101-5-119xx) with jail commissary revenue of $20,500 budgeted and a transfer in from Community Corrections
- BedsNot found - the county publishes no bed count
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Daniel Tague
- Runs the jailYes - the Sheriff's Office Corrections Division 'maintains custody and corrections service in a jail within the Courthouse'
- How the office is filledElected. ORS 204.005 requires Oregon sheriffs to be elected; ORS 204.010 sets a four-year term
- Office513 Center Street, Lakeview, Oregon 97630 - main office 541-947-6027, on the main floor of the Courthouse, Room 213
- Size of the officeSeven career deputies in the Criminal Division covering nearly 8,500 square miles, about the size of New Jersey; the Civil Division is one full-time employee
- SubstationChristmas Valley, in the government annex building - 541-576-2781
- How this was verifiedNamed with his county email address on the county's own Sheriff page, and in the Oregon State Sheriffs' Association biography for Lake County
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Lake County Sheriff · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Oregon Circuit Court judges are elected in nonpartisan races to six-year terms and are state judicial officers, not county officials. A judge, not the sheriff, sets security amounts and release conditions; the sheriff's office only receives the money and releases the person. Justices of the Peace are the hybrid: a JP is both a state-authorised court judge and a county elected official, elected to a six-year term, with the county paying for the court. Lake County is the whole of the 26th Judicial District and has a single circuit judge, who is also its presiding judge. The county publishes no Justice Court, so there is no county-elected judge in Lake County.
Circuit Court - 26th Judicial District (Lake County)
- David M. Vandenberg - Presiding Judge, position 1, the district's only circuit judge
- 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
- named is recorded 'yes' on a narrow reading: the county's own Sheriff page says the Corrections Division runs a jail inside the Courthouse and gives a corrections contact address. It never prints a facility name such as 'Lake County Jail', so a reader cannot learn from the county what its jail is called.
- budget: the only adopted budget the county publishes is 2018-19, at https://www.lakecountyor.org/government/uploads/18-19%20Adopted%20Budget.pdf. It is a full line-item document and does contain a COUNTY JAIL programme, so the check passes, but the newest county budget on the site is seven years old and the Business Department page's other budget link is a 2018-2019 meeting notice.
- fees: the county publishes a Sheriff Fees schedule, but that is civil process and concealed handgun fees, not jail phone, video visit or commissary rates.
- roster, capacity, bond_info: nothing published. There is no in-custody list, no bed or population figure and no guidance on how to post bail anywhere on the county site.
- deaths, prea, inspections, contracts: nothing published by the county.
- state_inspection: Oregon has no published state jail inspection result. The Oregon State Sheriffs' Association runs the inspection programme and publishes its standards at https://oregonsheriffs.org/jail-standards/ but no per-jail finding.
- Lake County is governed by a three-member Board of County Commissioners: Barry Shullanberger, James Williams and Mark Albertson. The county posts commissioner meeting agendas by year back to 2021 and meeting minutes by year back to 2021, plus a combined calendar and schedule for 2026. It is a board of commissioners rather than a county court, so no county judge sits on it.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Lake 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 Lake 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