Mitchell County

Notes on the record

• Domain correction. The address carried in the directory for this county, mitchellcoia.us, redirects to mitchellcounty.iowa.gov, which is where Mitchell County publishes. That site was opened in this pass, and every fact in this record was read from it.
• Mitchell County was examined this time, not skipped. Its site opened normally. Every one of the ten checks is recorded no because the county publishes nothing about a jail at all - not a facility name, not a roster, not a capacity, not bond guidance, not a fee schedule. There is no Jail or Corrections entry in its department list, and its Sheriff's Department page is a contact block with no jail content. The county's own FAQ has twelve entries and none touches jail, inmates, bond or visitation.
• Whether Mitchell County operates its own jail is therefore not established from its own site. That is recorded as unestablished rather than guessed at either way. No Iowa source opened here says where Mitchell County prisoners are held.
• Sheriff Greg Beaver is confirmed twice on the county's own domain - on the Sheriff's Department page and in the county's published Employee Contacts List PDF - and appears by name in Board of Supervisors proceedings from both 2022 and 2025.
• Budget notices are published (Proposed FY27 Budget, FY27 and FY26 budget amendments, FY25 budget amendment, Proposed Budget FY23-24) but the FY27 notice page opened carries no figures and no attached document, and no sheriff, jail or public-safety line was visible. The budget check is recorded no.
• 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. No copy published by Mitchell County was found; the county publishes no jail page and its posted board proceedings index shows no inspection report.
• 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 Mitchell 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 (Iowa counties are governed by a Board of Supervisors, not commissioners). Five members, elected by district: Todd Frein (District 1, term 2026), Jim Wherry (District 2, term 2028), Sydney Hartogh (District 3, term 2026), Pam Marzen (District 4, term 2028) and Mark Hendrickson (District 5, term 2028). The board meets every Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m. at 212 S. 5th St., Osage, IA 50461, phone (641) 832-3942, and individual supervisors keep rotating weekday office hours. The county posts meeting agendas, board proceedings and YouTube recordings back through 2026 on the board page, and publishes budget notices separately. The board is a statutory recipient of the annual jail inspection report under Iowa Code 356.43(4); nothing resembling one was found in the posted proceedings index. Note that the county's older Employee Contacts List PDF still names Steve Smolik and Mike Meyer as supervisors; the board page above is the current list and is what is recorded here.