The Detention Center
Adair County Public Safety Center (houses the county jail)
- Operated byAdair County Sheriff's Office
- FacilityThe Adair County Public Safety Center houses both the county jail and the City of Greenfield Police Department, per the county's FY2017 Popular Annual Financial Report
- CompletedApril 2012 (FY2017 Popular Annual Financial Report)
- How it was paid forA 2010 bond election that passed with 69% approval, for an amount not exceeding $3 million (FY2017 Popular Annual Financial Report)
- FY2017 bookings299 persons booked — 229 men and 70 women — with 2,179 total days incarcerated (FY2017 Popular Annual Financial Report). No bed count and no average daily population figure were published.
- FY2017 jail line itemsInmate meals $33,121; inmate medical/dentistry $5,460; Public Safety and Legal Services was 11% of total county expenditures
- Sheriff's office address302 E. Iowa St., Greenfield, IA 50849 (county sheriff page)
- What was triedhttps://adaircounty.iowa.gov/sheriff/ carries no jail page, no roster, no bond schedule and no fee schedule; https://adaircounty.iowa.gov/supervisors/meetings/ and https://adaircounty.iowa.gov/supervisors/ were checked for an inspection report and none is posted
Source: Adair County — Popular Annual Financial Report, Fiscal Year 2017 · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗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 built2012 — the Adair County Public Safety Center was completed in April 2012
- Original costThe 2010 bond election authorized an amount not exceeding $3 million
- Paid for byCounty bond issue approved by Adair County voters in 2010 with 69% approval. County jails in Iowa run on county property and local taxes; no federal funding is claimed here.
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jeff Vandewater
- Runs the jailYes — the elected sheriff, under Iowa Code 356.2 ("The sheriff shall have charge and custody of the prisoners in the jail or other prisons of the sheriff's county") and Iowa Code 331.653(35)
- How the office is filledElected to a four-year term under Iowa Code 331.651; the sheriff must be a certified peace officer or complete basic training within a year, and on a vacancy the first deputy assumes the office
- Jail managedThe county's own FY2017 Popular Annual Financial Report describes the Sheriff's Office and Public Safety Center as "a 24-hours per day, 7 days a week operation" that includes "managing the county jail"
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Adair County — County Elected Officials · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Iowa's district judges are merit-selected, not elected in contested races: a district judicial nominating commission (Iowa Code ch. 46 — five electors appointed by the governor, five elected by the resident bar, chaired by the judge of longest service) sends the governor two nominees, the governor appoints one, and the judge then faces a yes/no retention election and six-year terms. Iowa has 14 judicial election districts for nominating purposes. Bail at first appearance is set by a magistrate, not a district judge: Iowa Code 804.22 requires an arrested person to be taken 'without unnecessary delay...before the nearest or most accessible magistrate,' who 'shall fix the amount of bail or other conditions of release.' Iowa magistrates are appointed, not elected — Iowa Code 602.6501 puts a magistrate appointing commission in each county (one district judge, three members appointed by the county board of supervisors, and two attorneys elected by the county's attorneys), and Iowa Code 602.6403 has that commission appoint the county's magistrate or magistrates to four-year terms. The three supervisor appointees are the only voter-accountable link in how the official who sets bail got the job. Judges are state judicial officers, not county officials, and are not added to the vote line.
Iowa District Court — district judges for this county's judicial election district
- Not found
Magistrate — the officer who fixes bail at initial appearance (Iowa Code 804.22)
- Not found
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-18
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
- Adair County's sheriff page (https://adaircounty.iowa.gov/sheriff/) has only Civil and History sub-pages and says nothing about the jail. Everything recorded here about the jail comes from the county auditor's own FY2017 Popular Annual Financial Report, which is the newest county-published document found that describes the facility.
- capacity is marked "no" deliberately: the FY2017 report gives bookings (299) and total inmate-days (2,179) but never states a bed count or an average daily population, which is what the check asks for.
- Iowa Code 356.49 requires every sheriff to file a monthly written report with the IDOC director giving the number of men, women and juveniles held, so the population data exists inside IDOC — but no evidence was found that IDOC publishes it, and there is no state jail-population page.
- Deaths in custody: Iowa has no public dataset. Iowa Admin. Code 201—50.22(14) requires the state jail inspection unit to be notified within 24 hours of any death, attempted suicide, fire, escape, injury to staff or prisoners from assaults, or use of force and prisoner self-injuries, and Iowa Code 127.3(1) requires an autopsy for a custodial death not explained by a natural disease process — neither produces a public number.
- Open records: Iowa Code ch. 22. The right is at 22.2 ("Every person shall have the right to examine and copy a public record"). There is no blanket response deadline; the only clock is 22.8(4), which caps delay taken to screen a record for confidentiality at twenty calendar days and says it ordinarily should not exceed ten business days.
- Board of Supervisors — five members, one per district, described on the county's own page as "the executive branch of county government": Matt Wedemeyer (District 1, term expires 2028), Jodie Hoadley (District 2, 2026), Jerry Walker (District 3, Chairperson, 2028), Nathan Baier (District 4, 2026) and Michael Christoffersen (District 5, Vice-Chairperson, 2028). The board meets most Wednesdays at 9:00 a.m. in the Boardroom at the Adair County Courthouse, 400 Public Square, Greenfield.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Adair 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.
Names verified 2026-09-18 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered