The Detention Center
King County Correctional Facility (Seattle) and Maleng Regional Justice Center (Kent)
- Operated byKing County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention
- Who runs itAllen Nance — Director, Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (DAJD), appointed by the County Executive
- Seattle jailKing County Correctional Facility, 500 Fifth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 — opened 1986
- Kent jailMaleng Regional Justice Center, 620 W. James St., Kent, WA 98032 — opened 1997
- Average daily population published by the countyKCCF 790.3 and MRJC 621.2 year-to-date in the December 2025 Detention and Alternatives Report
- Rated beds2,408 across the department, against an ADP of 1,411.5 in CY2025 — WASPC, not the county
- Other senior managersSteve Larsen, Deputy Director; Lisaye Ishikawa Manning, Seattle Facility Commander; Mohamed Eltayeb, Kent Facility Commander
- Phone rate published5 cents per minute through Securus Technologies, plus two free calls a week
- Original cost / funding / expansionsNot found — checked the Adult Jails page, the Data and Reports pages, the Reports and Audits page and the 2026-2027 budget pages
Source: King County DAJD — Adult jails, Seattle and Kent · checked 2026-08-23
Transparency rating
7/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✓Deaths in custody
- ✓PREA audits
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtKing County Correctional Facility opened 1986; Maleng Regional Justice Center opened 1997
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot published by the county. WASPC records 2,408 rated beds for the department against an average daily population of 1,411.5 in CY2025. The county's own December 2025 Detention and Alternatives Report gives year-to-date ADP of 790.3 at KCCF and 621.2 at MRJC but no capacity figure.
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Patricia (Patti) Cole-Tindall
- Runs the jailNo — the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention does, under RCW 70.48.090(4)
- How the office is filledAppointed by the County Executive and confirmed by the County Council since voters approved Charter Amendment 5 in November 2020; re-appointed by Executive Girmay Zahilay in November 2025
- UndersheriffJeffrey Flohr
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: King County Sheriff's Office — Leadership Team · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Washington Superior Court judges are elected in nonpartisan countywide races and District Court judges in nonpartisan district races; municipal court judges are elected or appointed by the city. All are state judicial officers, not county officials — the county pays part of the cost but does not choose the judge. A judge, not the sheriff or the jail, sets bail. Court rosters here come from the Administrative Office of the Courts' county directory at courts.wa.gov. King County has no Justice Court; District Court judges handle first appearances and bail for misdemeanours, and Superior Court judges for felonies.
King County Superior Court — Presiding Judge (2026 judicial assignments)
- Averil Rothrock, Presiding Judge
- Tanya L. Thorp, Assistant Presiding Judge
- Brian McDonald, Chief Judge, Criminal
King County Superior Court — 516 3rd Ave, Seattle (state directory lists more than 50 judges)
- Monica Kaup Cary
- Samuel Chung
- Janet Helson
- Jason Holloway
- Nelson K.H. Lee
- Hillary Madsen
- Brian McDonald
- John F. McHale
- Maureen McKee
- Sean Patrick O'Donnell
King County District Court — Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah, Shoreline, Burien, Auburn and Kent (MRJC) divisions
- Yvonne Chin
- Kujlinder K. Dhillon
- Rebecca C. Robertson
- Kristin D. Shotwell
- Matthew York
- Jill Klinge
- Lisa O'Toole
- Marcus Naylor
- Michael J. Finkle
- Michelle K. Gehlsen
- Peter J. Peaquin
- Kevin Peck
- Nathaniel B. Green
- Leah M. Taguba
- Laurel Gibson
- Rhonda L. Laumann
- Brian J. Todd
- Virginia Amato
- Corinna D. Harn
- Karama H. Hawkins Calloway
- Andrea Jarmon
- Fa'amomoi Masaniai
- Raul Martinez
- 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
- This is one of the three Washington counties the brief names where an appointed civilian director, not the sheriff, is the jailer — and King is the only county in Washington where the sheriff is also appointed rather than elected.
- deaths: DAJD publishes the unexpected fatality review report for every in-custody death back to 2021, by incident number, on its Reports and Audits page. This is the most complete county-published death record in the group.
- prea: DAJD publishes both its own PREA annual reports (2023, 2024, 2025) and the third-party PREA final audit reports for KCCF, MRJC and CCFJC dated 2025 — genuine external audit results, not just a policy statement.
- capacity: marked no — the county publishes average daily population in monthly Detention and Alternatives Reports and a population dashboard, but no rated bed capacity for either facility, so the check fails on the first half.
- inspections: marked no — the only independent external review the county publishes is the PREA audit, already counted above. Washington has no state jail inspectorate.
- contracts: DAJD holds prisoners for cities under interlocal jail-services agreements, but neither the agreements nor the per-day or booking rates are published on DAJD's own pages; checked the DAJD site, the Working with DAJD page and the data and reports pages.
- fees: the county publishes the 5-cents-per-minute Securus phone rate on its own page and a dated commissary price list; it publishes no video-visit rate.
- Jail bookings are also released as a rolling 12-month open dataset at data.kingcounty.gov.
- Washington has no state jail inspectorate and no enforceable statewide jail standards; the Corrections Standards Board was abolished in 1987 and RCW 70.48.071 leaves each local government to adopt its own. The only statewide jail record the state publishes is the Department of Health's unexpected-fatality review file under RCW 70.48.510.
- WASPC 2025 statewide jail statistics: https://www.waspc.org/annual-jail-statistics (data file https://waspc.memberclicks.net/assets/JbrsSavin/2025.xlsx)
- King County is a home-rule charter county and has no Board of County Commissioners. Its legislative authority is the nine-member Metropolitan King County Council, elected by district in nonpartisan races; the County Executive is separately elected. No jail district and no dedicated jail tax is published.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in King 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 auditor runs the election in King 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