The Detention Center
Appanoose County Jail
- Operated byAppanoose County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address22158 Dewey Rd. (PO Box 474), Centerville, IA 52544; phone (641) 437-7106
- Sheriff's office address201 N. 12th St., Centerville, Iowa 52544
- Rated capacity12 inmates — stated in the county's own Jail Needs Assessment
- Year builtCompleted in late 1974 (Jail Needs Assessment)
- Average daily population21.37, the 2013–2015 average, against a rated capacity of 12 (Jail Needs Assessment)
- GrandfatheringThe assessment states the existing facility "was designed and constructed before minimum jail standards were codified in Iowa's Administrative Code, in 1982" and is therefore grandfathered from certain requirements
- What the assessment recommended"a 40 bed Law Enforcement Center with the capability to expand by an additional 10 beds"; bed-need projections ran from 27 beds by 2015 to 50 beds by 2045. No cost estimate is given in this Phase 1 document.
- Who wrote itProchaska & Associates (Omaha, NE), dated August 13, 2015
- Jail staffingFive full-time jail staff (sheriff's office FAQ page)
- Phone and commissaryInmate phone system managed by Reliance Telephone (1-800-896-3201); visitors may bring money for inmates to purchase items from the jail commissary. No rate schedule is published.
Source: Appanoose County — Jail · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✓Independent inspection
- ✗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 built1974 — "Completed in late 1974"
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found. County jails in Iowa run on county property and local taxes; no federal funding is claimed here.
- BedsRated capacity of 12 inmates
Since then
- None found. The county's 2015 Phase 1 Jail Needs Assessment recommended a 40-bed Law Enforcement Center expandable by a further 10 beds; whether it was built is not established by anything opened here.
The Sheriff
Sheriff Gary D. Anderson
- 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
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Appanoose County — Sheriff · 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 →
Notes on the record
- This is the Iowa win for this group. The state does not publish jail inspection reports, but Appanoose County does publish, on its own domain, a Jail Needs Assessment dated August 13, 2015 whose Appendix A is the "Iowa Department of Corrections Jail Inspection Report (dated 6/18/2015)". The inspection check passes on the county's own copy of the state report.
- Caveat recorded honestly: the text extraction of that PDF cut off before the appendices, so the body of the 6/18/2015 inspection report — its findings, the inspector's name, any recorded non-compliance — was not read. Only the appendix title, its date, and the main report's discussion of it were read. Nothing from the appendix is characterised here.
- The capacity check passes on the same document: a rated capacity of 12 inmates against a 2013–2015 average daily population of 21.37. Those are the county's own published figures, reported here as the assessment reports them, without characterising them.
- The 2015 assessment is a decade old. Whether the recommended 40-bed Law Enforcement Center was ever built, and whether the rated capacity is still 12, could not be established from anything opened on the county's site.
- Appanoose names Reliance Telephone as its inmate phone vendor and confirms a commissary exists, but publishes no rates, so fees is "no". No bond schedule, no roster and no PREA audit were found.
- 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; Iowa Code 127.3(1) requires an autopsy for a custodial death not explained by a natural disease process.
- Open records: Iowa Code ch. 22, right at 22.2. No blanket deadline; 22.8(4) caps confidentiality-screening delay at twenty calendar days and says it ordinarily should not exceed ten business days.
- Board of Supervisors. Individual members' names were not obtained from a county page that was actually opened, so they are not recorded here rather than guessed. The county publishes a document titled "The Structure of County Government" at https://appanoosecounty.iowa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/structure-government.pdf .
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Appanoose 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