Marshall County

Notes on the record

• This county's sheriff was previously unresolved. The Marshall County Sheriff's Office publishes on its own separate domain, marshallcountysheriff.com, which counts as first party, and that site was opened in this pass. Its Administration page names Sheriff Joel Phillips and Chief Deputy Ben Veren, and its Jail page names the Marshall County Jail, its 182-bed capacity, its July 2000 opening and Chief Jailer Patrick White.
• The capacity check is recorded yes for the published 182-bed figure. The jail's daily population is not published anywhere on the county's or the sheriff's domain.
• The roster check is recorded no. The sheriff's site does carry an inmate list, but it is served from an outside vendor portal at marshall-so-ia.zuercherportal.com rather than from a Marshall County domain.
• The sheriff's site carries a PREA page in its Jail menu. That page could not be retrieved in this session, so nothing is asserted about it and the prea check is recorded no for want of a page opened rather than for want of publication. A later pass should start at marshallcountysheriff.com/jail/ and follow the PREA link.
• The sheriff's FAQ was opened and contains nothing on posting bond or bail, jail capacity, inmate phone or commissary costs, room and board charges, or holding prisoners for other agencies. It covers leaving messages for inmates, inmate notification registration and reaching the inmate list. Bond and fees are therefore recorded no.
• Commissary deposits and remote video visits are routed through jailatm.com and CIDNET, and the site says remote video visitation requires a data purchase, but no rate, per-minute price or deposit fee is published. The fees check is recorded no on that basis.
• Marshall County is the largest county in this rescue group. No detention or corrections budget line, no death in custody, no inspection report and no boarding contract was found published on either marshallcountyia.gov or marshallcountysheriff.com.
• Jail inspection: Iowa inspects every jail every year but the state 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 municipal holding facility, and Iowa Admin. Code 201-50.3 requires the chief jail inspector to visit and inspect each jail within the 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. Iowa Code 356.43(4) then routes the report to only four places - the IDOC director, the sheriff or police chief, the local governing body, and the county attorney. Nothing requires anyone to post it, and doc.iowa.gov has no jail-inspections section. Marshall County does not publish its copy on either of its two domains, marshallcountyia.gov or marshallcountysheriff.com.
• Iowa has no public statewide dataset of deaths in county custody. 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 no natural disease process accounts for the death. Neither produces a published number. No death in Marshall County custody was found published by the county.
• 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. No evidence was found that IDOC publishes those counts, so capacity and daily population can pass only from the county's own figures.
• Iowa's open-records right is Iowa Code ch. 22; 22.2 gives every person 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.
• Under Iowa Code 356.2 the elected sheriff has charge and custody of the prisoners in the jail or other prisons of the sheriff's county, and Iowa Code 331.653(35) repeats it among the sheriff's general duties. Iowa Code 356.5, the keeper's duty section, requires the jail to be kept clean and healthful, bedding, clothing, towels, fuel and medical aid to be furnished, each prisoner to be served three times each day with an ample quantity of wholesome food and clean fresh water, an account kept of what is furnished, and a matron kept on the premises at all times while any female prisoner is held.
• Board of Supervisors, three members: Jarret Heil (Chair, term expires 2026), Carol Hibbs (Vice Chair, term expires 2026), Christian Goodman (term expires 2028). Meetings every other Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. in the courthouse board room, 1 E. Main St., Suite 140, Marshalltown. Two Board of Supervisors minutes files read in an earlier pass (May 9, 2022 and September 28, 2021) mention the jail only as a staffing matter - a certified Jailer's employment and a promotion 'from Jailer to Jail Supervisor 1 at $23.32 /hr, full time permanent, effective on or after 10/3/2021'. Neither contains inspection results, capacity, population, boarding contracts or a detention budget. The board is a statutory recipient of the annual jail inspection report under Iowa Code 356.43(4).