The Detention Center
Jackson County Jail
- Operated byJackson County Sheriff's Office
- Address published on the jail pageJackson County Courthouse, 201 W. Platt St., Maquoketa, IA 52060
- Sheriff's Office / LEC1700 E. Maple St., Maquoketa, IA 52060
- Phone providerCidnet; inmates may send two outgoing letters a week
- Beds / capacityNot found on the county's site
- What was triedjacksoncounty.iowa.gov/sheriff/, /sheriff/county_jail/, /departments/, /supervisors/, /supervisors/resolutions/ and the 24 June 2025 Board of Supervisors minutes PDF - no capacity, roster, corrections budget, inspection report, death record, PREA audit, fee schedule or inmate-housing contract was published
Source: Jackson County Sheriff - County Jail · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗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 Brent Kilburg
- 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 addressLaw Enforcement Center, 1700 E. Maple St., Maquoketa, IA 52060
- Jurisdiction648 square miles, per the county's page
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Jackson 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 →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- LEAD CHECKED AND NOT CONFIRMED FROM THE COUNTY'S OWN SITE. The reported April 2026 arrangement under which Jackson County houses overflow prisoners for Scott County at roughly $55 per day, following a jail expansion said to have been completed in late 2024, could not be verified as something Jackson County publishes. The county's jail page, sheriff page, departments page, Board of Supervisors page, the board's resolutions list and the 24 June 2025 board minutes were all opened; none carries the agreement, a per-diem rate, or any reference to housing Scott County prisoners. The only Scott County item found in the minutes is unrelated - a 28E Agreement for Mental Health Advocate Services among Cedar, Clinton, Jackson, Muscatine and Scott Counties effective 1 July 2025. The contracts check is therefore 'no'. A news report is not the county publishing, so none is cited.
- No jail expansion, build date, cost or bed count is published on the county's own domain, so the building block is left as not found rather than filled from the lead.
- 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 - three members elected to four-year terms: Don Schwenker (Chairman), Nin Flagel and Mike Steines. Regular meetings Tuesday mornings at 9:00 a.m. at the Jackson County Courthouse, 201 West Platt St., Maquoketa.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Jackson 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