The Detention Center
Henry County Jail
- Operated byHenry County Sheriff's Office - Corrections Division
- Beds96
- Year built2019
- Published description"The Henry County Jail, built in 2019, is a 96 bed 24/7 facility that serves the communities and various law enforcement agencies of Henry County."
- Jail phone319-385-2712
- What was triedhenrycounty.iowa.gov/sheriff/ and /sheriff/corrections-division/ - the county lists PREA, VINE, inmate mail, visitation and account pages, but no inspection report, no roster (the roster link on the corrections page did not resolve), no rate for other agencies and no phone/video/commissary price list
Source: Henry County Sheriff - Corrections Division · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓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 — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built2019
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds96
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Rich McNamee
- Runs the jailYes - Iowa Code 356.2 gives the sheriff charge and custody of the prisoners in the county jail; repeated at Iowa Code 331.653(35)
- How the office is filledElected county-wide to a four-year term (Iowa Code 331.651); on a vacancy the first deputy assumes the office
- Office address800 S. Grand Ave, Mt. Pleasant, IA 52641
- Divisions listedCivil, Corrections, Dispatch, Patrol/Reserves
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Henry 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) sends the governor two nominees, the governor appoints one, and the judge then faces a yes/no retention election for a six-year term - there are no contested judicial elections. Bail at first appearance is set by a magistrate (Iowa Code 804.22), and Iowa magistrates are appointed, not elected: under Iowa Code 602.6501 a county magistrate appointing commission - one district judge, three members appointed by the county board of supervisors, and two attorneys elected by the county's attorneys - appoints the county's magistrates to four-year terms under 602.6403. The three supervisor appointees are the only voter-accountable link in how the bail-setting officer got the job. Judges are state judicial officers, not county officials.
Magistrate - sets bail at first appearance (Iowa Code 804.22)
- Not found
Iowa District Court - district judges
- 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
Notes on the record
- The county publishes a rated bed count (96) and the year built (2019) on its own corrections page, but not the daily population - Iowa publishes no jail-population figure either.
- Verified negative from the county's own sitemap (https://henrycounty.iowa.gov/sitemap/, opened): Henry County publishes no jail inspection report, no PREA audit, no inmate roster, no jail fee schedule, no inmate-housing contract and no separate budget document. The sitemap lists an Annual Financial Report on a third-party portal, which is not a corrections or detention budget, so the budget check stays 'no'.
- The county's old domain henrycountyiowa.us now 302-redirects to henrycounty.iowa.gov.
- The corrections page says the jail "serves the communities and various law enforcement agencies of Henry County" but publishes no contract or per-diem rate, so the contracts check is 'no'.
- Iowa inspects every jail annually - Iowa Admin. Code 201-50.3 requires the chief jail inspector to visit and inspect each jail in the state at least annually, and 201-50.2(3) allows the visit to be unannounced. But Iowa Code 356.43(4) routes the resulting report only to the IDOC director, the sheriff, the local governing body and the county attorney. Nothing requires it to be posted, doc.iowa.gov has no jail-inspections section, and this county does not publish its copy on its own site.
- Iowa publishes no statewide jail death 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 under police custody where no natural disease process accounts for it. Neither duty produces a public number.
- 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.
- Open records run under 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 county's own sitemap, opened at https://henrycounty.iowa.gov/sitemap/, lists a Board of Supervisors page at /bos/ and routes agendas, minutes and the annual financial report to a third-party document portal (cap.gmdsolutions.com). Those pages were not opened in this run, so no member names are claimed and no URL is cited that was not read.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Henry 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