The Detention Center
Butler County Jail
- Operated byButler County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address428 Sixth Street, P.O. Box 307, Allison, IA 50602; non-emergency (319) 346-6621
- Beds12 inmates, in five cells — "three single cells, one three person cell and one six person cell"
- Holds another county's prisonersThe jail holds persons arrested for Butler County crimes and also houses Franklin County prisoners, which the county states generates approximately $90,000 annually in revenue. No per-diem rate and no copy of the agreement are published.
- VisitationMales Monday and Thursday 1:00–3:00 p.m.; females Tuesday and Friday 1:00–3:00 p.m.
- CommissaryInmates may "purchase items from the jail commissary two times a week." No price list is published.
- ProvisionsInmates are issued jail uniforms, deodorant, tooth brushes and bedding, and receive "three hot meals a day"
- Daily population / year builtNot found — no average daily population figure and no construction date is published
- What was triedhttps://butlercounty.iowa.gov/departments/sheriff (no roster, no bond schedule, no fee schedule, no PREA audit, no inspection report); https://butlercounty.iowa.gov/departments/supervisors ; https://butlercounty.iowa.gov/departments/auditor/financialinformation (lists FY22–FY25 property tax levy documents, an FY25 Adopted County Budget and an FY23 GAAP Annual Financial Report by title only, with no hyperlinks exposed, so no budget document could be opened); the April 1, 2025 Board of Supervisors minutes.
Source: Butler County — Sheriff · 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 — not published
- ✓Who else it holds, and for how much
- ✗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.
- Beds12 inmates, in five cells — three single cells, one three-person cell and one six-person cell
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jason 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
- Confirmed currentNamed as Sheriff on the county's own sheriff's office page at butlercounty.iowa.gov
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Butler 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 →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The domain on file for Butler County, butlercoiowa.org, was wrong. The county's live site is butlercounty.iowa.gov, and the sheriff's page there is the single most informative page in this county's record.
- contracts passes, which is rare in this dataset. Butler County states on its own sheriff's page that its jail houses Franklin County prisoners and that doing so generates approximately $90,000 annually. What it does not publish is the per-diem rate or the agreement itself, so the amount is recorded here as the county states it and nothing is inferred from it.
- capacity is marked "yes" on the published bed count — 12 inmates, with the cell breakdown given — but Butler publishes no average daily population, so only half of what the check asks for is actually available. That limitation is recorded rather than glossed.
- budget is "no". The auditor's Financial Information page lists an FY25 Adopted County Budget and an FY23 GAAP Annual Financial Report among its documents, but the page exposes titles only with no reachable links, so no budget document was opened and none is cited. The April 1, 2025 supervisors' minutes do publish approved claims that include jail and sheriff line items — among them jail board and care of $486.45 and sheriff uniform expenses of $447.01 for March 2025 — but a claims list is not a corrections budget and is not treated as one.
- No roster, no bond guidance, no commissary or phone price list, no PREA audit and no IDOC jail inspection report is published by this county.
- 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 of the department of corrections 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 death in a prison, jail or correctional institution or under police custody where there is not a natural disease process that accounts for the death. 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 — three members, one per district: Greg Barnett (1st District), Wayne Dralle (2nd District) and Rusty Eddy (3rd District), who chaired the April 1, 2025 meeting at which all three were present. The board meets in the Boardroom every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. unless otherwise noted, at the Butler County Courthouse, 428 Sixth Street, P.O. Box 325, Allison, IA 50602. Agenda items are placed through Auditor Leslie Groen.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Butler 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