The Detention Center
Delaware County Sheriff's Correctional Facility
- Operated byDelaware County Sheriff's Office
- Detention commandAlisha Cooke — Jail Administrator
- Jail address1225 W. Howard Street, Manchester, IA 52057
- Jail phone(563) 927-3135, ext. 6622 or 6623; office hours Monday–Friday 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
- Beds / capacity'The Sheriff oversees a Jail that has the capacity to house 42 inmates' — no daily population figure is published
- Year built / costNot found on the Sheriff's own site
- Conditions published'Inmates receive 3 meals per day which are delivered directly to their cell'; medical care for ill or injured inmates is provided through Regional Medical Center
- Room and boardThe site offers online and QR-code payment of 'Room & Board' but publishes no rate
- Correctional staffTwelve correctional officers are named on the staff roster alongside the Jail Administrator
Source: Delaware County Sheriff's Office — County Jail Division · 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 — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✗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
- Beds42 — 'the capacity to house 42 inmates', per the Sheriff's County Jail Division page
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Travis Hemesath
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's own site states 'The Sheriff oversees a Jail that has the capacity to house 42 inmates'
- 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.
- Chief DeputyJill Knipper
- Where this is publishedOn the Sheriff's Office's own domain, delawarecounty.iowa.gov, which is first-party
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Delaware County Sheriff's Office — Meet Our Staff · 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 Delaware 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 →
Notes on the record
- The county's old web address (co.delaware.ia.us) now redirects to delawarecounty.iowa.gov. Everything cited here was opened on that current domain, which is the Sheriff's Office's own first-party site.
- Capacity is recorded as 'yes' on a rated figure only — 42 inmates. No daily population number is published anywhere on the domain.
- Bond: the Sheriff's Office publishes that cash bonds are posted at the Delaware County Jail, Monday–Friday 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and are then transferred to the County Clerk of Court and held through the case, being returned at disposition unless otherwise specified; alternatively a person may contact a bonding company of their choice, which sets its own terms, and the Sheriff's staff state they are unable to recommend or discredit any such company. No fee amounts are given.
- Fees: inmate account deposits can be made online, by phone or at a kiosk at the facility, and a 'Pay Room & Board' page exists, but no phone, video visit or commissary rate is published, so the fees check is 'no'.
- Roster: the County Jail Division page refers to an inmate roster but no roster URL on the county's own domain was opened, so the roster 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.
- Board of Supervisors. The Sheriff's Office links a Board of Supervisors section (agenda, minutes, claims, ordinances, resolutions, boards and commissions) and a County Budgets page, but those pages were refused by the fetcher and could not be opened, so no supervisor is named here and no county budget figure is cited. A guessed name would be worse than 'Not found'.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Delaware 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