The Detention Center
Spokane County Jail and Geiger Corrections Center
- Operated bySpokane County Detention Services
- Who runs itDonald Hooper — Chief, Spokane County Detention Services, appointed by the Not found — the county's Detention Services pages and staff directory name the Chief but do not say who appoints him; Spokane County has a Chief Executive Officer and a five-member Board of County Commissioners
- Detention Services office1100 W Mallon Avenue, Spokane, WA 99260 — 509-477-2278
- ChiefDonald Hooper
- Command staffLewis Wirth, Admin Lieutenant; Aaron Anderton, Custody Lieutenant; Darren Lehman, Operations Support Lieutenant; Jonnie Eaton, Administrative Manager
- Rated beds (state figure)915 across Detention Services — WASPC 2025 Annual Jail Statistics
- Average daily population 2025805.6, against 915 rated beds (WASPC 2025)
- Throughput 202514,334 admissions, average length of stay 21.17 days (WASPC 2025)
- In-custody deaths 2025Yes — Detention Services answered "Yes" in the WASPC 2025 return; the county publishes no count of its own
- Death in custody, 2023The Department of Health has published Detention Services' unexpected fatality review for incident 2023-21899, a death at the Spokane County Jail on 24 June 2023; the review committee met on 31 October 2023 and included Detention Services administration and command staff, mental health staff, the county's attorney and NaphCare
- RosterPublic and split by facility — Spokane County Jail inmate, Geiger Facility inmate, and Geiger Facility electronic home monitoring, which the roster notes is community custody and not housed in a facility
- 2026 General FundDetention Services: $68,630,000 expense against $20,197,011 revenue — Spokane County 2026 Comprehensive Budget, General Fund agency revenue and expense, adoption
- Year built / original cost / fundingNot found
Source: Spokane County — Detention Services · 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 found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds915 rated beds across Detention Services in the WASPC 2025 return; no county-published bed count could be read
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff John Nowels
- Runs the jailNo — Spokane County Detention Services, a stand-alone county department, runs the Spokane County Jail and the Geiger Corrections Center
- How the office is filledElected countywide; assumed office 1 January 2023 after the November 2022 election, current term ends 31 December 2026
- What the Sheriff's Office doesGeneral law enforcement, civil process and court security; the county lists Detention Services separately from the Sheriff's Office in its department index
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Ballotpedia — John Nowels · checked 2026-08-23
The Judges
Washington Superior Court judges are elected in nonpartisan countywide races and District Court judges in nonpartisan district races. Both 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 and not the jail, sets bail. Vacancies are filled by gubernatorial appointment until the next election. Court rosters here come from the Administrative Office of the Courts' county directory. Spokane County District Court sits in the same Public Safety Building as Detention Services, at 1100 W Mallon Avenue.
Spokane County Superior Court — 1116 W Broadway Ave, Spokane
- Rachelle E. Anderson
- Breean L. Beggs
- Charnelle M. Bjelkengren
- Dean Tze-Ming Chuang
- Candie M. Dibble
- Tony D. Hazel
- Jacquelyn High-Edward
- Julie M. McKay
- Annette S. Plese
- Marla L. Polin
- Jeremy T. Schmidt
- Michelle "Shelley" D. Szambelan
- Andrew B. Van Winkle
Spokane County District Court — 1100 W Mallon Ave, Public Safety Building, Spokane
- Andrew Biviano
- Jennifer Fassbender
- Patrick T. Johnson
- Richard M. Leland
- Aimee Maurer
- Jeffrey R. Smith
- Jenny Zappone
- 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
- Spokane is one of the three verified Washington counties where an appointed civilian department, not the elected sheriff, runs the jail — Detention Services under Chief Donald Hooper, alongside King County's DAJD and Yakima County's Department of Corrections. Who appoints the Chief is not stated on the county site.
- Detention Services runs two facilities: the Spokane County Jail downtown and the Geiger Corrections Center. The WASPC return reports them as one agency, so the 915 beds and 805.6 average daily population cover both.
- The county publishes a Detention Services Dashboard at https://www.spokanecounty.gov/5716/Detention-Services-Dashboard, but the dashboard itself is a Power BI embed whose contents could not be read, so the capacity check is marked 'no' rather than credited.
- Several county pages — Jail Information, the Sheriff's page and the ConnectNetwork phone page — returned HTTP 429 or were otherwise unreachable across repeated attempts, so bail guidance and phone or commissary rates could not be confirmed either way. The sheriff's name was therefore taken from Ballotpedia rather than the county site.
- Detention Services answered 'Yes' to in-custody deaths in the 2025 WASPC return, and the Department of Health carries several Spokane unexpected fatality reviews, but the county publishes no death-in-custody information of its own.
- Board of County Commissioners — five commissioners elected by district to four-year terms, expanded from three: Chris Jordan (District 1), Amber Waldref (District 2), Josh Kerns (District 3, 2026 vice chair), Mary Brooks (District 4, 2026 chair), Al French (District 5). The Board meets most Mondays and Tuesdays at 1116 W Broadway Avenue. Detention Services is a county department answering outside the Sheriff's Office, and the Board adopts its budget — $68,630,000 in the 2026 General Fund. No jail district and no dedicated jail tax appear on the county site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Spokane 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 Spokane 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