The Detention Center
Dubuque County Jail, in the Dubuque Law Enforcement Center
- Operated byDubuque County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address770 Iowa St., Dubuque, IA 52001 (mail: P.O. Box 1004, Dubuque, IA 52004)
- Jail phone563-589-4400; Sheriff's general line 563-589-4406
- Beds / capacityNot found — no rated capacity or daily population figure appears on any Dubuque County page opened
- Year built / costNot found on the county's own site
- Jail administratorThe Sheriff's Office staff directory carries a Jail Administrator position but publishes no name for it, so jail_administrator is left null
- Programs publishedThe county's Jail page links a Dubuque County Jail House Arrest Program, plus Inmate Mail, Inmate Money, Inmate Phones, Inmate Visitation, Scheduling Jail Time and Work Release Inmates pages — none of which could be opened, so no rate or rule is cited from them
Source: Dubuque County — Jail · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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 Joseph L. Kennedy
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office runs the Jail, listed as one of its divisions, in the Dubuque Law Enforcement Center
- 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 DeputyDave Riniker
- Office addressDubuque Law Enforcement Center, 770 Iowa Street, PO Box 1004, Dubuque, IA 52004-1004
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Dubuque County Sheriff · 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 Dubuque 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
- Budget passes on the county's own appropriations resolutions, opened in full: FY2025 Resolution 24-203 (https://www.dubuquecountyiowa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/7571/Resolution-24-203---Appropriations-PDF) and FY2026 Resolution 25-114 of June 16, 2025. The Sheriff is appropriated as a single department — $17,560,572 in total for FY2025 and $19,385,459 for FY2026 — with the jail broken out only as the $250,000 Jail Inmate Fund, so there is no standalone corrections operating figure.
- No bond or bail guidance was found on a Dubuque County page that could be opened, and no phone, video visit or commissary rate is published, so bond_info and fees are both '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. The county's FY2026 resolution carries a $105,000 'Sheriff Forfeitures - Federal' line, which is forfeiture money and not jail operating funding.
- 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.
- Pages that could not be opened for this entry: the Contact Us page (/555/Contact-Us) and the county staff directory (/m/directory) both timed out repeatedly, and the jail sub-pages linked from /508/Jail were refused, so nothing is cited from any of them.
- Board of Supervisors, three members: Wayne Kenniker (Sageville), Ann McDonough (Asbury) and Harley Pothoff (Durango). Meetings are every other Monday at 9:00 a.m. in the Board Chambers on the 4th floor of the Dubuque County Courthouse, 720 Central Avenue, Dubuque, in person and by Zoom. The board's annual appropriations resolutions are the place the Sheriff's and jail money appears: Resolution 24-203 for FY2025 appropriated $14,042,722 plus $50,850 (General Basic) and $3,467,000 (General Supplement) to the Sheriff, with a separate Jail Inmate Fund (4027) line of $250,000; Resolution 25-114, adopted June 16, 2025 for FY2026, appropriated $15,016,459 General Basic, $4,014,000 General Supplement, $105,000 Sheriff Forfeitures — Federal, and $250,000 Jail Inmate Fund.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Dubuque 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