The Detention Center
None. Morrow County's prisoners are held at the Umatilla County Jail (Umatilla County Corrections Facility) in Pendleton
- Operated byUmatilla County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division, under contract to Morrow County
- Where the prisoners goUmatilla County Jail, 4700 NW Pioneer Place, Pendleton, OR 97801 - the county gives the jail's direct number, 541-966-3632, on its own Jail/Prisoners page
- Size of the contract'The current contract allows the Sheriff's Office to rent 600 jail beds each month (20 per day)' - Morrow County's own words
- What Umatilla is paidUmatilla County's adopted FY2026-27 budget carries a revenue line 'Morrow Co Detention Fees' budgeted at $500,000, against actuals of $583,186 and $921,583 in the two prior years. No per-day rate is published by either county
- Who tracks the prisonersThe Morrow County communications sergeant tracks all Morrow County prisoners, their court appearances, mental health and medical appointments and transports, and handles prisoner billing and prisoner medical billing. Sergeant Sarah Baker is the named contact
- Long staysThe county's own page records that prisoners 'can sometimes spend more than a year in jail while the courts and attorneys work out legal issues'
- After sentencingPrisoners sentenced to the Department of Corrections are transferred to the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility intake centre
- Corrections DivisionMorrow County does keep a Corrections Division - four personnel supervised by a corrections lieutenant, covering Parole and Probation and the Community Service Work Crew, but no custodial facility
- What was triedThe county's Sheriff's Office pages, Corrections Division page, Jail/Prisoners page, budget page and Board of Commissioners pages were all read. Nothing is published about a death in custody, a PREA audit, an inspection result, bed capacity of its own, or bail-posting guidance
Source: Morrow County Sheriff's Office - Jail/Prisoners · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗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 applicable - Morrow County owns no jail
- Original costNot applicable
- Paid for byMorrow County buys jail beds rather than building them. The cost sits inside the Sheriff's Office budget as prisoner and prisoner-medical billing handled by the communications sergeant; the county publishes adopted budgets back to 2014-15 but no separate jail line is broken out on the budget index page
- BedsNone of its own. The county contracts for 600 bed-days a month at the Umatilla County Jail - 20 per day
Since then
- Not applicable
The Sheriff
Sheriff John A. Bowles
- Runs the jailNo jail to run - 'The Morrow County Sheriff's Office does not have its own correctional facility', the Sheriff's Office's own words. Morrow prisoners are lodged at the Umatilla County Jail in Pendleton under contract
- How the office is filledElected. ORS 204.005 requires Oregon sheriffs to be elected to four-year terms
- In office since1 November 2022 - appointed unanimously by the Morrow County Board of Commissioners in October 2022 as the seventeenth Sheriff of Morrow County, then elected by the voters in November 2024 for a four-year term
- CareerJoined the Sheriff's Office in February 2002 as a 911 call taker/dispatcher, then reserve patrol deputy, marine patrol deputy, full-time patrol deputy from August 2003, dual-certified parole and probation deputy from 2010, and Undersheriff from February 2016 under Sheriff Kenneth Matlack
- Size of the officeAs Undersheriff he supervised 52 full-time, part-time and reserve employees, the Sheriff's Office's own figure
- UndersheriffBrian L. Snyder
- OfficeMorrow County Sheriff's Office, 325 Willow View Dr, PO Box 159, Heppner, OR 97836 - 541-676-5317
- How this was verifiedNamed on the county's own Sheriff's Office page, in the county's biography page for the Sheriff, and in the county's Jail/Prisoners page
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Morrow 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. ORS 169.320 makes the sheriff the keeper of the county jail; the sheriff may appoint a keeper but remains responsible. Morrow County has no resident circuit judge: the five judges of the 6th Judicial District are elected in both Umatilla and Morrow counties and serve in both circuit courts, and 'the judges rotate hearing cases in Morrow County', where the court is seated weekly on Thursdays and as needed for trials. Bail for a Morrow County arrestee is therefore set by a judge sitting in Heppner or Pendleton while the person is held in another county's jail. The county also runs its own Justice Court, with a single Justice of the Peace sitting at Heppner on Mondays and Tuesdays and at Irrigon Monday to Friday.
Circuit Court - 6th Judicial District (Umatilla and Morrow counties)
- Eva J. Temple - Presiding Judge of the Sixth Judicial District, Courtroom 4, Hermiston; Chief Civil and Family Law judge for both counties
- Daniel J. Hill - position 3, Courtroom 5, Hermiston; Chief Criminal Judge for Umatilla and Morrow
- Jon Lieuallen - position 2, Courtroom 3, Pendleton; criminal caseload
- Robert W. Collins - position 1, Courtroom 2, Pendleton; primary juvenile delinquency judge
- John L. Ballard - position 5, Courtroom 1, Pendleton; traffic, small claims and evictions
Morrow County Justice Court - offices at Heppner (Morrow County Courthouse, 100 S. Court St.) and Irrigon (Morrow County Government Center, 215 NE Main Street)
- Glen G. Diehl, Justice of the Peace
- 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
- Morrow County is one of the Oregon counties with no jail, so this is recorded as a finding rather than a gap. Its prisoners go to the Umatilla County Jail in Pendleton, in the neighbouring county that shares its circuit court district.
- named: the county names the facility that holds its prisoners plainly on its own Jail/Prisoners page, and gives that jail's direct phone number.
- roster: the same page carries a web link headed 'Current inmates at Umatilla County Jail (including Morrow County)'. The roster itself is Umatilla's, hosted at https://ucso.citizenrims.com/arrests , but Morrow publishes the route to it.
- capacity: recorded 'no'. Morrow publishes its contracted allocation - 600 beds a month, 20 a day - but that is a purchase, not a facility capacity, and no daily count of Morrow prisoners is published.
- budget: adopted budgets are published back to fiscal year 2014-15, including an online budget book for FY2026-27. No jail-specific figure is broken out on the index page itself.
- contracts: recorded 'no' under the terms of the check - Morrow holds no other agency's prisoners; it is a buyer, not a seller. The buying side is unusually well documented for a small county: Morrow states the bed allocation and Umatilla's own budget states the money.
- bond_info: nothing is published about how to post bail. The Jail/Prisoners page directs the reader to phone the Umatilla County Jail.
- deaths, prea, inspections, fees: nothing published by Morrow County on any of these.
- state_inspection: Oregon has no state jail inspectorate. The Oregon State Sheriffs' Association runs a voluntary jail standards and inspection programme, but publishes no per-jail finding for a county that has no jail.
- Morrow County is governed by a three-member Board of County Commissioners. The body was a County Court until 9 January 2017, when 'the Morrow County Court became the Morrow County Board of Commissioners' - the county's own words. Members are Chair David Sykes (Position 3, term 2 January 2023 to 4 January 2027), Vice-Chair Jeff Wenholz (Position 2, same term) and Commissioner August (Gus) Peterson (Position 1, term 6 January 2025 to 1 January 2029). The District Attorney, Justin Nelson, doubles as County Counsel. The Board's office is in the Morrow County Bartholomew Building, Room 201, 110 N. Court St., Heppner. It was this Board that appointed Sheriff Bowles in October 2022, so the county's governing body chose the officer who buys its jail beds.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Morrow 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 Morrow 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