The Detention Center
Lincoln County Jail
- Operated byLincoln County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- Jail address225 West Olive Street, Newport, Oregon 97365; the lobby kiosk and money drop is at the entry of 251 W Olive Street
- When it opened1 June 1992 - the county's own jail facts page
- Beds127 in use now, against a physical capacity of 161; the jail opened with 101 beds and has been reorganised several times since 1992
- PopulationAverage daily population 125 in FY2024-25
- Bookings2,542 in 2025, with 142 forced or matrix releases; 2,282 bookings and 70 forced or matrix releases in FY2024-25
- Cost of running it$7,736,083 in expenses against $631,512 in revenue in FY2024-25, from the Sheriff's Office's own Corrections Division Overview presented to the county
- Staffing50 FTE - one jail commander, three sergeants, six corporals, 25 deputies, four technicians, a warrants and transports specialist, a support services specialist, a counsellor, a corrections health office assistant, three nurses, a nurse supervisor, a food service manager and two cooks
- DesignPrimarily direct podular supervision with some indirect podular supervision
- Jail commanderLieutenant Josh McDowall, 541-265-0702
Source: Lincoln County Sheriff's Office - 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 builtOpened 1 June 1992 - the county's own Jail page and the Sheriff's Office Corrections Division Overview both give the date
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byCounty budget. Lincoln County publishes adopted budgets back to 2018-19 and the Sheriff's Office publishes the jail's own annual expense and revenue figures
- Beds127 in use; physical capacity 161; opened with 101
Since then
- 'Multiple facility reorganizations between 1992 and now' - the Sheriff's Office's own words. Bed count has risen from 101 at opening to 127, against a 161 capacity. No dated expansion project is published
The Sheriff
Sheriff Adam D. Shanks
- Runs the jailYes - the Sheriff's Office operates the Lincoln County Jail, commanded by Lieutenant Josh McDowall
- How the office is filledElected. ORS 204.005 requires Oregon sheriffs to be elected; ORS 204.010 sets a four-year term
- In office sinceJanuary 2025, having been elected in the autumn of 2024. He started with the office in 1995 as a seasonal marine cadet, became a patrol deputy in 1997, patrol sergeant in 2005 and administrative lieutenant on 1 February 2017
- Office225 West Olive Street, Room 203, Newport, Oregon 97365 - the main Sheriff's Office and jail
- How this was verifiedNamed on the county's own Sheriff's Office page, signing the county's published quarterly jail phone revenue reports, and in the Oregon State Sheriffs' Association biography
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Lincoln County Sheriff's Office · 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. Lincoln County is the whole of the 17th Judicial District and has three circuit judges. The county publishes no Justice Court, so there is no county-elected judge in Lincoln County.
Circuit Court - 17th Judicial District (Lincoln County)
- Sheryl Bachart - Presiding Judge, position 1
- Marcia L. Buckley - position 2
- Amanda R. Benjamin - position 3
- 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
- Lincoln County publishes an unusual amount about the money in its jail. Quarterly jail phone revenue reports are posted back to April 2020 at https://www.co.lincoln.or.us/Archive.aspx?AMID=54, each signed by the Sheriff, and they state plainly that 'Lincoln county receives 45% of total inmate call revenue' - the October to December 2025 report shows $4,769.38, $5,178.37 and $6,054.68 in total call revenue for the three months, of which the county's share was $2,657.35, $1,635.03 and $1,917.08. The same reports carry adult in custody commissary fund expenditures.
- fees is still recorded 'no': the revenue reports give totals, not a rate a family could look up before making a call. The only price the county publishes is the third-party kiosk credit card processing fee of approximately $8.00 a transaction.
- capacity and budget both come from the Sheriff's Office Corrections Division Overview published in the county's document centre at https://www.co.lincoln.or.us/DocumentCenter/View/7386, together with the Jail page's own facts panel.
- inspections is recorded 'no'. The Corrections Division Overview does describe the inspection regime the jail is subject to - the fifteen statutory standards in ORS 169.076 and OSSA accreditation against 314 standards - but it publishes no inspection or accreditation result, and no report is posted.
- prea: the only PREA reference on the county site is inside the Sheriff's Office policy manual. No audit report is published.
- deaths, contracts: nothing published by the county.
- Position 2 on the Board of Commissioners is shown as vacant on the county's own page at the time of this record; that is what the county publishes, not an omission in this file.
- 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.
- Lincoln County is governed by a three-member Board of Commissioners, elected countywide. At the time of this record only two of the three seats are filled: Casey Miller (Position 1) and Vice-Chair Walter Chuck (Position 3); Position 2 is vacant on the county's own About the Commissioners page. The board offices are at 225 W Olive Street Room 110, Newport - the same building as the Sheriff's Office and jail. Public comment for the meeting packet closes at noon the day before the meeting, usually noon Tuesday.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Lincoln 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 Lincoln 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