The Detention Center
Audubon County Jail
- Operated byAudubon County Sheriff's Office
- Detention commandDavid Beane — Chief Deputy, who also serves as Jail Administrator
- Sheriff's department address318 Leroy St., Ste. 4, Audubon, Iowa 50025; phone 712-563-2631
- Jail staffingFour full-time combined Dispatcher/Jailer positions are listed on the staff page: Deb Steffes, Kate Lebeck, Lisa Powell and Sydney Rodriguez
- Jail administrationChief Deputy David Beane serves as Jail Administrator
- Beds / year built / addressNot found — the county publishes no jail page of its own, only the staff listing that identifies a jail administrator and jailers
- What was triedhttps://www.auduboncountyia.gov/county-information/sheriff/ (no jail content, no roster, no bond or fee information); https://www.auduboncountyia.gov/county-information/sheriff/department-staff.aspx ; https://www.auduboncountyia.gov/directory/audubon-county-sheriff.aspx?d=2 (contact details only); and the Board of Supervisors minutes for January 27, 2026 at https://www.auduboncountyia.gov/webres/File/BOS%20Minutes%202026/1-27-26%20BOS%20Minutes.pdf
Source: Audubon County — Sheriff's Department Staff · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗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. 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 Todd W. Johnson
- 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
- First elected"Sheriff Todd W. Johnson was elected sheriff in 2000" (county sheriff's department staff page)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Audubon County — Sheriff's Department Staff · 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
- Audubon County has no jail page. The only place the county names its own jail is the sheriff's department staff listing, which identifies a Jail Administrator and four full-time Dispatcher/Jailer positions. That is thin, but it is first-party and it is the basis for the named check.
- jail_administrator is filled in here even though Iowa's normal rule is that the elected sheriff is the jailer, because the county itself names a specific officer over the facility. The role sits inside the sheriff's office; it is not a separate county detention department under Iowa Code 356A.1 and not a 28E regional authority.
- Three supervisors' meeting-minute PDFs from 2025 and 2026 were located on the county's site; the one read (January 27, 2026) contains sheriff's office personnel actions but no jail inspection report, no boarding contract and no corrections budget.
- 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. In the minutes of January 27, 2026 the chairman is Kent Grabill, and Don Mosinski and Heath Hansen appear moving and seconding motions; those three are the supervisors identifiable from that document. Other names in the same minutes are county officers and staff — Lisa Frederiksen (Auditor), Chassity Musfeldt (Auditor Clerk), Miranda Bills (Recorder), Debbie Campbell (Treasurer), Ben Linde (IT Director) — and are not supervisors. The board's jail business in that meeting was personnel: accepting the resignation of jailer/dispatcher Christine Burgin, and hiring Ethan Bearley as an as-needed deputy effective January 27, 2026.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Audubon 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