The Detention Center
Hancock County Jail
- Operated byHancock County Sheriff's Office - but inmates are held at the Winnebago County jail
- Detention commandKevin Knebel — Jail Administrator
- Jail addressCounty Courthouse, 855 State St., Garner, IA 50438
- Where prisoners go'Since 2018 all inmates have been housed at the Winnebago County jail in Forest City.' The Hancock facility is described by the county as a state-certified facility used temporarily for court appearances.
- What that costsThe Board of Supervisors minutes of 20 October 2025 record an expense claim line 'WINNEBAGO COUNTY JAIL MONTHLY INMATE 14,245.00'. That is one month's claim as the minutes record it; no per-diem rate and no written agreement were published.
- Jail AdministratorKevin Knebel (641-923-2621 / 641-924-2148)
- RosterThe Jail Division page publishes a jail roster as a PDF and links IowaVINE / VINElink for custody notifications.
- Other fees publishedApplicant fingerprinting $10 per person, Monday-Friday 7 a.m.-4 p.m. No commissary, phone or video-visit rates are published.
- Beds and populationNot published.
Source: Hancock County Sheriff - Jail Division · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗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 Rob Gerdes
- 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.
- How the county states itThe sheriff's office page records Rob Gerdes as sheriff, elected in November 2020.
- Where the prisoners actually areSince 2018 Hancock County's inmates have been housed at the Winnebago County jail in Forest City; the county keeps a state-certified facility at the courthouse used temporarily for court appearances.
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Hancock County Sheriff's Office · 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
- The most substantive Hancock County finding is that the county does not hold its own prisoners: 'Since 2018 all inmates have been housed at the Winnebago County jail in Forest City,' and the courthouse facility is kept only for temporary court-appearance holding. That is the finding, not a gap.
- The county publishes what it pays for that arrangement only incidentally, as a claims line in supervisors minutes: 'WINNEBAGO COUNTY JAIL MONTHLY INMATE 14,245.00' in the minutes of 20 October 2025 (https://hancockcountyia.gov/files/meetings/2025-10-20_minutes_6058.pdf). No rate, term or written agreement is published, so 'contracts' is marked no.
- The 'contracts' check asks whether the county publishes contracts to hold other agencies' prisoners with rates. Hancock is on the other side of that relationship - it pays another county to hold its own - so the check is 'no' and the arrangement is recorded here instead.
- An archive of supervisors minutes and agendas back to 2019 is published at https://hancockcountyia.gov/supervisors/meetings_minutes/ . That archive index shows no jail-inspection document, and the one minutes file opened contains no inspection discussion. This is the place an IDOC report would most likely appear, and it is not there.
- A county budget is not published in a form that was opened; the auditor's financial and tax information page (https://hancockcountyia.gov/auditor/financial_and_tax_information/) exists but could not be retrieved, so 'budget' is marked no.
- 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.'
- Board of Supervisors - three members, as listed on the county's own supervisors page: Osmund 'Bud' Jermeland (Chair), Florence 'Sis' Greiman, and Gary Rayhons. All three are recorded present in the 20 October 2025 minutes. The page notes supervisors hold appointments to detention and emergency-management entities.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Hancock 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