The Detention Center
Not found - the county operates a jail but does not name the facility on its own site
- Operated byFremont County Sheriff's Office
- Jail existsYes. The sheriff's page lists a separate jail phone line (712-374-2115), and the Board of Supervisors agenda for 29 April 2026 carries the item 'Tim Bothwell, Chief Deputy - Discuss/Action Hiring for the Jail'.
- Facility name publishedNot found. No page opened on fremontcountyia.gov names the facility.
- What was triedOpened https://www.fremontcountyia.gov/vnews/display.v/SEC/County|Sheriff , https://www.fremontcountyia.gov/pages/uploaded_files/AGENDA_04292026.pdf , and the supervisors minutes archive for March 2019, February 2018, July 2015 and July 2007 (https://www.fremontcountyia.gov/vimages/shared/vnews/stories/5c855601bd281/032019min.htm , .../022018min.htm , .../072015min.htm , .../072007min.htm). The county supervisors page (https://www.fremontcountyia.gov/vnews/display.v/SEC/County|Supervisors) and the site root could not be retrieved in this session.
Source: Fremont County Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
0/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗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 Kevin Aistrope
- Runs the jailYes - the elected county sheriff. 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.' Iowa Code 331.653(35) repeats it in the sheriff's general duties.
- How the office is filledElective, four-year term (Iowa Code 331.651). The sheriff must be a certified peace officer or complete basic training within a year; on a vacancy the first deputy assumes the office.
- Keeper's dutyIowa Code 356.5 requires the keeper to keep the jail clean and healthful; furnish bedding, clothing, towels, fuel and medical aid; serve each prisoner three times each day with an ample quantity of wholesome food; furnish clean fresh water; keep an account of what is furnished; and keep a matron on the premises at all times while any female prisoner is held.
- Sheriff's office address2814 200th St., PO Box 359, Sidney, Iowa 51652-0359 (office 712-374-2424; a separate jail line, 712-374-2115, is listed)
- Chief DeputyTim Bothwell, listed on the Board of Supervisors agenda for 29 April 2026 to 'Discuss/Action Hiring for the Jail'
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Fremont County Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Iowa judges are not county officials and are not elected in contested races. District judges are merit-selected: a district judicial nominating commission (Iowa Code ch. 46) sends the governor two nominees, the governor appoints one, and the judge then stands in a yes/no retention election for six-year terms. The official who actually sets bail at first appearance is a magistrate: 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 magistrates to four-year terms. The three supervisor appointees are the only voter-accountable link in how the bail-setting official got the job. No magistrate for this county was named from a source actually opened.
Iowa District Court - magistrate who sets bail at initial appearance
- 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
- Fremont County operates a jail: the sheriff's page carries a dedicated jail phone line and the 29 April 2026 supervisors agenda includes 'Discuss/Action Hiring for the Jail'. The county does not name the facility, publish a roster, publish beds or population, or publish bond, fee, PREA or inspection information anywhere this session could open.
- The 29 April 2026 agenda also lists a '28E Agreement with the Sheriff's Office' item (Justin Shirley) and a 'Sheriff & Patrolling' discussion (Kent Benefiel). Iowa Code chapter 28E is the joint-exercise-of-powers vehicle behind shared law-enforcement and detention arrangements, but the agenda does not say what this particular 28E agreement covers and no signed agreement was found, so nothing is asserted about it.
- Supervisors minutes reached back as far as 2006 were searched for the IDOC jail inspection report, which under Iowa Code 356.43(4) is delivered to the board. None was found. The only jail items in the minutes opened are building and staffing matters: 'repair work to front porch at jail' and 'the need for attorney interview room at the jail' (July 2007); a motion 'to hire a structural engineer to evaluate the condition of the current jail facility to see if it would be suitable for county offices' (28 July 2015); and dispatcher/jailer hires (March 2019). The 2015 motion contemplated repurposing the building, but the 29 April 2026 agenda item on hiring for the jail shows the county was still staffing a jail in 2026.
- 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 data exists inside IDOC, but no evidence was found that IDOC publishes it and there is no state jail-population page. Capacity and population can only be judged from what the county itself publishes.
- Iowa publishes no statewide dataset of deaths in county jail custody. Two duties exist and neither produces a public number: 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 prison, jail or correctional institution or under police custody where there is not a natural disease process that accounts for the death, routing it through the state medical examiner. Neither is published.
- Open records run under Iowa Code chapter 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 - 'a reasonable delay for this purpose shall not exceed twenty calendar days and ordinarily should not exceed ten business days.'
- Fetch limits encountered: only URLs returned by a web search could be retrieved in this session. The pre-supplied site root https://www.fremontcountyia.gov/ and the supervisors page were both refused, which is why the board roster is 'Not found' rather than researched further.
- Board of Supervisors (Iowa counties have supervisors, not commissioners). A three-member board: the February 2018 minutes record three supervisors present at every meeting. Current members were not confirmed from a page opened in this session, so no names are recorded - naming supervisors who have since left office would be worse than recording nothing. The board's mailing address is P.O. Box 610, Sidney, IA 51652.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Fremont 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