The Detention Center
Lucas County Sheriff's Office Holding Facility, at the Lucas County Law Center
- Operated byLucas County Sheriff's Office
- Address48559 Hy-Vee Road, Chariton, IA 50049
- What it isThe county describes a 'Holding Facility' rather than a full jail. Its departments page says 'The facility houses individuals awaiting trial or serving short sentences.'
- Where longer-held prisoners goNot found - no Lucas County page opened names a county that holds Lucas County prisoners, and no 28E or boarding agreement was found published
- Rated capacityNot found on any Lucas County page opened
- What was triedThe county sheriff page links a separate sheriff site at https://www.lucascosheriff.org/holding-facility.html; that host could not be opened, so nothing from it is cited here
Source: Lucas County Sheriff · 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 Brett Tharp
- Runs the jailYes - the Sheriff's Office operates the county's holding facility; Iowa Code 356.2 gives the sheriff charge and custody of the prisoners in the county jail
- How the office is filledElected county office, four-year term (Iowa Code 331.651)
- Badge59-1, per the county's sheriff page
- Office addressLucas County Law Center, 48559 Hy-Vee Road, Chariton, IA 50049
- Phone641-774-5083
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Lucas County Sheriff · 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, chaired by the judge of longest service) sends the governor two nominees, the governor appoints one, and the judge then faces a yes/no retention election and six-year terms. Iowa has 14 judicial election districts for nominating purposes and no contested judicial elections. Bail at first appearance is set by a magistrate under Iowa Code 804.22, which 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 official who sets bail got the job. Judges are state judicial officers, not county officials.
Iowa District Court - Judicial District 5, Chief Judge
- Michael Huppert
Magistrate (sets bail at first appearance under Iowa Code 804.22)
- 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
- State inspection: Iowa inspects every jail every year but does not publish the report. Iowa Code 356.43 requires the Iowa Department of Corrections and its inspectors to make periodic inspections of every jail, and Iowa Admin. Code 201-50.3 requires the chief jail inspector to visit and inspect each jail within this state at least annually, with 201-50.2(3) allowing those visits to be unannounced and requiring jail staff to produce all books, records, medical records, data, documents and accounts. The standards are mandatory under Iowa Code 356.36. But Iowa Code 356.43(4) routes the report only to four places - the IDOC director, the sheriff or police chief, the local governing body and the county attorney - and nothing requires anyone to post it. doc.iowa.gov has no jails or jail-inspections section. No copy of Lucas County's own inspection report was found published on any county page opened.
- Lucas County's own pages describe a Sheriff's Office holding facility at the Lucas County Law Center, not a full county jail. Where prisoners held beyond a short stay are taken is not stated on any county page opened, so that is recorded as not found rather than asserted.
- The Lucas County Sheriff's Office also maintains a separate site at lucascosheriff.org, linked from the county page. That host could not be opened from here, so no check is credited to it.
- Deaths in custody: Iowa has no public 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 produces a public number, and Lucas County publishes none.
- Open records: Iowa Code ch. 22; the right to examine and copy is at 22.2. 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.
- Population and capacity: 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 can therefore only be judged from the county's own numbers.
- Board of Supervisors (Iowa counties have a board of supervisors, not commissioners). Three members: Larry Davis, Cathy Reece and Dennis Smith. The board typically meets the first and third Wednesday of each month at 10:00 a.m.; offices at 916 Braden Ave, First Floor, Chariton, IA 50049. Agendas and minutes are posted back to 2021. The board is a statutory recipient of the annual jail inspection report under Iowa Code 356.43(4); no such report was found in the posted minutes index.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Lucas 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