The Detention Center
Union County Correctional Facility (UCCF)
- Operated byUnion County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address1109 K Avenue, La Grande, OR 97850 - jail line 541-963-1020. The Sheriff's Office asks the public not to call the law enforcement line, 541-963-1017, for jail information
- When it was built1979 - 'The Union County Correctional Facility (UCCF) was opened in 1979', the Sheriff's Office's own words
- Capacity'houses a maximum of 37 inmates' - the same sentence
- Throughput'Each year the facility averages 1,200 bookings', with prisoners coming from the Union County Sheriff's Office, La Grande Police Department, Oregon State Police and Union County Community Corrections
- Sentencing programmeA single alternative-sentence programme, Work Crew, running Sunday to Wednesday - picking up trash, stacking firewood, shovelling snow, building or tearing down fences and clearing brush. 'The fee for work crew is $15 a day', waived for people sentenced to it by Union County Community Corrections. Failure to complete the days returns the person to the courts and a warrant issues
- Jail staffingThe county's approved FY2026-27 budget lists one Jail Lieutenant, one Civil Supervisor/Office Manager, one Corrections Sergeant, four Corporals and eight Corrections Officers, and a separate Jail Manager position line
- What the jail costsCorrections (Jail) is a named department in the county's approved FY2026-27 budget at $2,949,417, against $2,742,584 the previous year, sitting alongside Sheriff at $4,053,002. The department carries 22.73 FTE
- Money it takes inThe budget carries a revenue line, 3-42-1800 Jail Use Agreement, so the jail is party to an agreement to hold prisoners for another body - but no counterparty and no rate is published
- Regional roleThe budget narrative records the Sheriff's Office 'participating in the statewide inmate shuttle system by running the Baker' leg, and warns that liability insurance rose because of higher deductibles and high-risk premiums associated with jail operations
- VisitingNon-contact visits by appointment on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays only, booked by phone between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on the day. A maximum of one adult and two children may visit at a time, and staff cannot take commissary money, property, mail or messages over the counter
- What was triedThe Sheriff's Office corrections, bail, commissary, mail and visitation pages, the county's Sheriff-About, Elected Officials, Commissioners, Justice Court and Budget pages, and the full approved FY2026-27 budget PDF were read. No PREA result, inspection result, death-in-custody record, daily population figure or phone rate is published
Source: Union County Sheriff's Office - Corrections · 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 built1979 - 'The Union County Correctional Facility (UCCF) was opened in 1979', the Sheriff's Office's own words
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byCounty funds through the annual budget. Corrections (Jail) is a named department at $2,949,417 in the approved FY2026-27 budget, against $2,742,584 the year before, with 22.73 FTE, alongside Sheriff at $4,053,002. A Jail Use Agreement revenue line brings in money from another body, unnamed. No construction financing record is published
- Beds37 - 'houses a maximum of 37 inmates', the Sheriff's Office's own Corrections page
Since then
- Not found. The budget's only jail building line is 5-20-4612 Repair & Maint. Jail
The Sheriff
Sheriff Cody Bowen
- Runs the jailYes - the Union County Sheriff's Office operates the Union County Correctional Facility, and the Sheriff or the Jail Manager must approve any bail paid by cheque
- How the office is filledElected, nonpartisan. The county's Elected Officials page lists 'Sheriff - Cody Bowen, (NP) 2029', so his current term runs to 2029
- In office sinceJanuary 2021
- CareerFive years at Les Schwab Tire Center rising to assistant manager, then two years as a reserve/volunteer before being hired full time as a Union County patrol deputy in 2011. Certified DARE instructor. School Resource Deputy for La Grande School District from 2016 until taking office as Sheriff
- LocalBorn and raised in Union County; attended the La Grande and Cove school districts; has lived in La Grande, Cove and Union
- OfficeUnion County Sheriff's Office, 1109 K Avenue, La Grande, OR 97850 - law enforcement 541-963-1017, jail 541-963-1020
- How this was verifiedNamed on the county's own Sheriff-About page, on the county's Elected Officials list with his term, and on the Sheriff's Office's own site
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Union 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. Union County shares the 10th Judicial District with Wallowa County and has two circuit judges, both based in La Grande, one appointed to a vacancy in 2017 and the other elected in 2024. Both have deep local roots in the county's own criminal bar - one as a former Union County senior deputy district attorney and public defender, the other as a former Wallowa County treatment court defence representative - so the bench that sets security in this county is drawn from the same small legal community that appears in front of it. The county also runs a Justice Court at Island City, but does not name its Justice of the Peace on its own website, and no JP appears among the nine elected officials the county lists.
Circuit Court - 10th Judicial District (Union and Wallowa counties)
- Thomas B. Powers - Presiding Judge. Appointed by Governor Kate Brown in April 2017 to the vacancy created by Judge Brian Dretke's return to private practice; presides over the treatment court programmes in both Union and Wallowa counties
- Jared Boyd - Circuit Judge. Prosecutor at the Union County District Attorney's Office 2008 to 2015, leaving as a Senior Deputy District Attorney, then a La Grande solo practitioner doing state-contract public defence; elected in 2024 and took the bench in January 2025
Union County Justice Court - 10605 Island Avenue, Island City, OR 97850
- Not found - the county publishes the Justice Court's address, phone, email and payment terms but does not name its Justice of the Peace, and no Justice of the Peace appears on the county's Elected Officials list
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
- The Union County Sheriff's Office runs its own website at ucsooregon.gov, a .gov domain linked from the county's front page under 'Sheriff', 'Inmate Roster' and 'Send money to an Inmate'. Checks judged on that site are treated here as the county publishing, because it is a county office's official domain reached from the county's own home page. The county's main site at unioncountyor.gov carries only a Sheriff-About biography page and no jail content at all.
- capacity: recorded 'yes' on the published 37-bed maximum and the roughly 1,200 bookings a year. No daily population figure is published, which is the half of this check the county does not meet.
- bond_info: the bail page states that bail may be paid by cash or card, gives the GovPayNow link and PLC code 7855 and the phone number, tells the reader to get the file number from the roster first, states that cheques need prior approval from the Sheriff or Jail Manager, and is explicit that the Sheriff's Office cannot return bail even if charges are dropped - the courts must.
- fees: recorded 'no'. Two figures are published - $15 a day for work crew and a $300 per week cap on money an inmate may receive - but those are a sentencing-programme fee and a deposit limit, not phone, video visit or commissary rates. Commissary runs through jailatm.com or a lobby kiosk with no prices published.
- contracts: recorded 'no'. The approved budget carries revenue line 3-42-1800 Jail Use Agreement, and Umatilla County's own budget carries a standing Union Co Detention Fees line, so Union both sells and buys jail beds. Neither county publishes an agreement or a rate.
- budget: the county publishes annual budgets back to 2013-14 and external audit reports back to 2012-13 at the URL cited. The FY2026-27 approved budget is a scanned document whose figures were read from its department summary pages; the column order is Actuals, Actuals, Budget, Approved.
- deaths, prea, inspections: nothing published on either site.
- The county's Justice Court publishes a 4.0 per cent credit and debit card convenience fee with a $2.00 minimum, charged by Point & Pay and not retained by the county. That is a court fee, not a jail fee, and does not count for the fees check.
- state_inspection: Oregon has no state jail inspectorate. The Oregon State Sheriffs' Association runs a voluntary jail standards programme and publishes no per-jail result, and Union County publishes no inspection or accreditation of its own.
- Union County is governed by a three-member Board of County Commissioners, 'made up of 3 non-partisan positions'. The members and their term end years, as the county publishes them, are Paul Anderes (Position 1, 2027), Matt Scarfo (Position 2, 2027) and Jake Seavert (Position 3, 2029). Positions 1 and 2 are elected together and Position 3 in the intervening years, and the chair rotates among the three each January. The county's own words on its authority: 'It alone is empowered to pass an ordinance, adopt a budget or a comprehensive plan or give official status to policy or course of action.' The Board makes primary liaison assignments to each member for county departments and outside bodies, but states that liaison roles are limited in scope and 'final decisions can be made only by the governing body as a whole' - so the jail has a named commissioner contact but no individual commissioner controls it.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Union 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 Union 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