The Detention Center
Floyd County Jail
- Operated byFloyd County Sheriff's Office
- Detention commandTaylor Isakson — Jail Administrator
- Jail address101 South Main Street, Charles City, IA 50616 — in the Law Enforcement Center adjacent to the Floyd County Courthouse (jail suite listed as Suite 501)
- Jail phone641-257-6129 (jail 641-257-6217)
- Beds / capacity'licensed for 14 beds with a holding cell for short term occupancy of up to five additional inmates'
- Established1941
- DemandThe county's own FAQ states peaks have reached 27 beds needed, and that inmates are often transported elsewhere to meet classification requirements
- Cost of holding prisoners elsewhere'It costs $55/day, plus any transportation costs, per inmate transported outside of Floyd County.' The jail page separately gives a range of '$50-$65 per day, plus mileage'
- Jail staffNine correctional officers are named alongside the Jail Administrator on the Sheriff's Office directory
- Visitation and commissaryOn-site visits Fridays 1:00–3:00 p.m. by reservation made by Thursday 4:30 p.m.; off-site video visitation through the CIDNET vendor portal; commissary Mondays and Thursdays for hygiene items and snacks; inmates receive two prepaid envelopes weekly. No rates are published
Source: Floyd County — About the Jail · 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
- ✗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 built1941
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsLicensed for 14 beds, with a holding cell for short-term occupancy of up to five additional inmates
Since then
- Proposed replacement: a new law enforcement center with a 32-bed jail, together with courthouse updates, at a total project cost of approximately $13.5 million, to be funded by general obligation bonds over 19 years at $1.08 per $1,000 of taxable value at 3.5% interest. The county's FAQ states the 32-bed figure is the average of two studies, one proposing 45 beds and one 20, and that the practical full-capacity threshold is 80% — 25 of 32 beds — because of inmate classification. It also states that delaying one year would cost approximately $607,500 in construction inflation.
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jeff Crooks
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office lists jail operations among its services and runs the Floyd County Jail in the 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 DeputyPat Shirley
- Office101 South Main Street, Charles City, IA 50616; the Sheriff's page describes eleven deputies working out of three offices on the fourth floor of the courthouse
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Floyd County Sheriff's Office · 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 Floyd County magistrate or district judge was named on any county or court source opened for this entry.
Still needed
- 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
- Floyd County is the strongest of these five on inspection transparency: it publishes, on its own domain, what the state jail inspection found. The jail page records a 2013 inspection by Iowa State Department of Correction Chief Jail Inspector Delbert Longley reporting that the facility did not meet operational needs, including insufficient staff for emergencies. The county's Law Enforcement Center FAQ adds that since 2013 state inspectors have reported the facility 'does not meet the needs of the staff or public', citing improper inmate segregation, an outdated linear design, safety hazards including suicide attempts and assaults, water leaks, ADA non-compliance and inadequate staff security, and that the jail holds 'grandfathered' status it expects to lose within 10 to 15 years. These are the inspection's findings as the county itself reports them.
- Capacity passes on published beds — 14 licensed plus up to five in a holding cell — and on the county's own statement that demand has peaked at 27. No routine daily population count is published.
- Contracts is 'no': Floyd County pays other counties to hold its prisoners ($55/day plus transportation, or $50-$65 per day plus mileage on the jail page) rather than publishing a contract to hold another agency's prisoners at a stated rate.
- Bond: no page opened on floydcoia.org explains how to post bail, so bond_info is 'no'. The Sheriff's Office page links a 'Sheriff's Fees' item but no phone, video visit or commissary rate was found, so fees is 'no'.
- Roster: the Sheriff's Office page points to VINELink for prisoner tracking, which is not a county-published roster, so roster is 'no'.
- No copy of the Iowa Department of Corrections inspection report itself is posted — what the county publishes is its own account of what inspectors found. Iowa Code 356.43 and Iowa Admin. Code 201—50.3 require at least an annual inspection of every jail, and 201—50.2(3) allows it 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.
- County jails in Iowa run on county property and other local taxes; the replacement project here is to be funded by county general obligation bonds repaid by property tax. Federal money enters county jails 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, three members elected by district to four-year terms with elections every two years: Gloria Carr (District 1), Frank Rottinghaus (District 2) and Boyd Campbell (District 3). The board meets Tuesdays at 9 a.m. at the Floyd County Courthouse, 101 S Main Street, Suite 304, Charles City. Agendas are posted at least 24 hours ahead on the bulletin board near the ground floor courthouse entrance and on the county website; minutes from 2005 to the present are also kept in bound volumes. No corrections budget document is linked from the board page.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Floyd 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