Search Marin County Jail Custody

Marin County Jail Overview

Marin County Jail is operated by the Marin County Sheriff's Office Detention Services Bureau and Custody Division. It is the county's Type II adult jail on the Civic Center grounds in San Rafael. The jail houses adults booked for violations of law, people sentenced by Marin County Courts to serve jail terms, some state-prison terms carried out locally, and people held briefly while enroute to another jail or prison. Men and women are housed there. Youth under 18 are generally not housed in the adult jail except as allowed by law.

The facility is closely tied to the Marin County Civic Center and court campus, but the records do not all live in one place. Current custody and booking data come through the sheriff's booking system. Filed criminal cases are handled by Marin Superior Court. Older booking records route to Sheriff Records. Once a person is sentenced to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the correct lookup path becomes CDCR CIRIS rather than the Marin County Public Booking Log.

The Sheriff's Custody Division page is a subject-matched source for the jail's role, booking activity, mail, bail, and visitation rules. The screenshot below comes from the official Custody Division page.

Marin County Jail Capacity

Capacity figures for Marin County Jail need careful wording because official sources use more than one number. Marin County Public Works and the 2024 Civil Grand Jury describe six housing pods, 222 cells, and 385 physical beds. A 2024 county RFP referenced 376 beds, while a 2025 Civil Grand Jury reentry report used a 325 total bed-capacity figure. The most useful facility-page figure is the 385 physical bed count, paired with the caveat that classification, medical needs, mental-health needs, gang separation, protective custody, and single-cell assignments reduce practical usable capacity.

The 2025 PREA final audit reported a design capacity of 385, current population of 242 in the report, and average daily population of 251 over the prior 12 months. It also reported no over-capacity condition in the prior 12 months and identified the jail as a Type II pre-sentence and sentenced adult facility with no youthful inmates. The Sheriff's 2022 overview reported 5,454 booked individuals and average daily population of 245. BSCC 2025 monthly data later showed Marin Sheriff's Department jail ADP ranging from 240 in December to 281 in July.

The Public Works jail furniture project is a local source for the six-pod, 222-cell, 385-bed physical plant. The source page is Marin County Public Works jail furniture replacement.

Lookup Marin County Jail Inmates

The correct online lookup for this facility is the Marin County Public Booking Log. It covers public data for people arrested and booked into Marin County Jail in the last 48 hours who are still in custody, plus the complete current inmate list at the time the search is run. It is not a historical inmate archive. If the person has been released, transferred, sentenced to CDCR, held federally, placed in ICE custody, or handled as a youth matter, the county booking log may not answer the question.

1. Open the Marin County Public Booking Log rather than a general sheriff homepage.
2. Enter the last name if known. The captured field is optional, so a blank search may show a broader current list when the live app allows it.
3. Review the result for current custody, booked charges, booking agency, bail, and next court date when available through jail staff or the log.
4. Call the jail custody information line if the person does not appear but a recent Marin arrest is likely.
5. Switch to CDCR CIRIS for sentenced state-prison custody, BOP for federal sentenced custody, or ICE ODLS for immigration custody.

Marin County Jail Contact

The jail contact lines are used for custody status, bail questions, visiting concerns, and urgent medical or mental-health routing. Sheriff materials list current-custody information as both (415) 499-7316 and (415) 473-7316, so important custody or release details should be confirmed by phone. Exact bail information has its own line because the booking-log warning says online bail values may be approximate.

Visit Marin County Jail

Marin County Jail visits must be scheduled 24 hours in advance through GTL/ViaPath VisitMe, the GTL VisMobile Android app, or the lobby kiosk. The Detention Bureau also lists a GTL scheduling phone number of 855-208-7349. Walk-up visits are not accepted. Each inmate is allowed one 30-minute onsite visit per day and one 25-minute video visit per day. Up to three people may visit at once, and minors must be with a parent or legal guardian and have valid school, state, or passport identification.

Visitors need valid identification and must pass security screening. The Sheriff FAQ says visitors pass through a metal detector, and a visitor who cannot use the detector for medical reasons will be patted down. Only one key is allowed in the visiting room. Lockers are available for 25 cents. Dress rules bar gang-affiliated clothing or colors, low-hanging pants, revealing clothing, short shorts or miniskirts, low-cut tops, tube tops, halter tops, and crop tops.

Marin County Jail Mail

Non-legal mail for Marin County Jail goes through Pigeonly. The mail is opened, scanned, reviewed for jail screening, printed, and delivered to the facility. Original non-legal mail is stored for 45 days and then destroyed. Legal, official, and publisher mail uses the jail's San Rafael address instead of the Pigeonly Las Vegas processing address. Books and magazines must be paperback and sent directly from a bookstore or publisher, and inmates may have a total of five soft-covered books or magazines.

Marin County Jail Booking

Booking starts when an arresting or transporting agency brings a person to Marin County Jail. Staff screen the person and the paperwork before secure booking. Required paperwork can include arrest reports, probable-cause declarations, warrants, court orders, bail surrender documents, victim notification information, religious or diet needs, disability accommodations, and suicide-risk information. Local warrants must be verified through the Warrants Division before acceptance, and mistaken-identity or identity-theft warrant claims require reasonable follow-up before custody is accepted.

Once accepted, the arrestee is searched, property is inventoried, and a booking number is generated for the current admission. First-time Marin County Jail arrestees receive a Jail ID number, often called a JID, that follows the person across later jail contacts. The booking number is different because it belongs to one stay. Jail policy also describes fingerprints, booking photos, medical screening, mental-health screening, and DOJ/FBI fingerprint transmission for retainable charges. An arrested person has a right to three free completed local phone calls under the Sheriff FAQ's Penal Code 851 discussion.

Marin County Jail Conditions

The 2024 Civil Grand Jury described Marin County Jail as a distinctive local facility because it is built into the hillside near the Frank Lloyd Wright Civic Center. The jail opened in November 1994, replaced the original Civic Center jail and a nearby Honor Farm, and uses a hub-and-spoke layout with direct-supervision pods around a central hub. The same design supports secure court movement, including jail-to-court movement on the Civic Center campus, but the Grand Jury said the underground design limits natural light, fresh air, programming space, medical space, mental-health space, and future expansion.

Programs named in Sheriff, Civil Grand Jury, PREA, and county health materials include education, literacy, addiction counseling, parenting classes, church services, AA, NA, mindfulness, anger management, behavioral-health assessment, treatment, discharge planning, and jail reentry support. County HHS identifies Jail Behavioral Health Services and Jail Re-Entry Services for people with treatment and continuity-of-care needs. The PREA audit submitted March 26, 2025 found 45 standards met and no standards not met, while the Civil Grand Jury and later oversight materials documented continuing debate about facility design, mental-health needs, and a possible justice-center model.