The Detention Center
Decatur County jail — no formal facility name is published; the Sheriff's page identifies the county jail by its own address
- Operated byDecatur County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address206 NE 2nd Street, Leon, IA 50144
- Sheriff's Office address201 NE Idaho St., Leon, IA 50144; phone 641-446-4111
- Beds / capacityNot found — no rated capacity or daily population figure appears on any Decatur County page opened
- Year built / costNot found on the county's own site
- Room and boardThe Sheriff's fee list publishes Room & Board at $60 per day
- Prisoners held elsewhere tooBoard of Supervisors minutes of February 9, 2026 record claims to Central Iowa Detention for detention services over two periods totalling $2,250.00, so some Decatur County prisoners are held at that facility as well as in the county's own jail
- Inmate lookupThe Sheriff's page points to a roster hosted on a third-party vendor portal (inmates.bluhorse.com), not on a county domain, so it is not counted
Source: Decatur County Sheriff / Sheriff's Sale Notices · 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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Chris Lane
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office page states the county operates its own jail, at 206 NE 2nd Street, Leon
- How the office is filledElected; Iowa Code 331.651 makes the sheriff elective to a four-year term. Iowa Code 356.2 gives the sheriff charge and custody of the prisoners in the jail of the sheriff's county, and Iowa Code 331.653(35) repeats it among the sheriff's general duties.
- TermThe county's elected officials page lists Sheriff Chris Lane with a term ending in 2028
- Chief DeputyDaniel Cox
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Decatur County — Elected Officials · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Iowa district judges are merit-selected: a district judicial nominating commission (Iowa Code ch. 46 — five electors appointed by the governor, five elected by the resident bar) sends the governor two nominees, the governor appoints one, and the judge then faces a yes/no retention election and a six-year term. Bail at first appearance is set by a magistrate under Iowa Code 804.22, and 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, two attorneys elected by the county's attorneys) and Iowa Code 602.6403 has that commission appoint the county's magistrates to four-year terms. The three supervisor appointees are the only voter-accountable link in how the bail-setting magistrate got the job. No Decatur County magistrate or district judge was named on any county or court source opened for this entry.
- 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 county's old web address (decatur.municipalcms.com) now redirects to decaturcountyia.municipalone.com; everything cited here was opened on the current domain.
- Fees: the Sheriff's page publishes a service fee list — Permit to Acquire $25, weapon permit $50 new / $25 renewal, police report $10, 911 sign $100, and Room & Board $60 per day. It publishes no phone, video visit or commissary rates, so the fees check is 'no'.
- Bond: no page opened on the county's domain explains how to post bail, so the bond_info check is 'no'.
- No copy of this county's Iowa Department of Corrections jail inspection report was found on its own domain. Inspection happens annually — Iowa Code 356.43 requires periodic inspection of every jail and Iowa Admin. Code 201—50.3 requires the chief jail inspector to visit and inspect each jail in the state at least annually, with 201—50.2(3) allowing the visit to be unannounced — but Iowa Code 356.43(4) routes the report only to the IDOC director, the sheriff, the local governing body and the county attorney, and nothing requires anyone to post it. This county does not publish it.
- County jails in Iowa run on county property and other local taxes; federal money enters only through per-diem boarding, SCAAP and grants.
- Deaths in custody: Iowa publishes no statewide 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, and Iowa Code 127.3(1) requires an autopsy for a death in a jail or police custody not accounted for by a natural disease process. Neither duty produces a public number, and this county publishes no death in its custody on its own site.
- 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 a delay taken to screen a record for confidentiality at twenty calendar days and says it ordinarily should not exceed ten business days.
- The Board of Supervisors page notes archived minutes are also held on an outside archive service (gov.arcasearch.com), which is not a county domain and is not cited here.
- Board of Supervisors, three members elected to staggered four-year terms: Ward Graham (term ends 2028), Doug Tharp (term ends 2028, and recorded as 2026 Chair) and Steve Fulkerson (term ends 2026). The board meets each Monday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Decatur County Courthouse, 207 N. Main Street, Leon, moving to Tuesday when the courthouse is closed for a Monday holiday. Jail costs surface in the board's claims lists rather than in any published corrections budget — the June 15, 2026 minutes carry 'ACCURATE CONTROLS INC --- REPAIR/MAINT-JAIL --- $1,514.00', 'DECATUR COUNTY HOSPITAL --- MEDICAL-INMATE --- $4,535.34' and 'INFINITY HEALTH --- INMATE MEDICAL --- $171.00'.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Decatur 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