The Detention Center
Not found — the county names no jail facility on its own site; the sheriff's page gives only the Law Enforcement Center
- Operated byMontgomery County Sheriff's Office
- Where the sheriff's office and jail operations sitLaw Enforcement Center, 106 W Coolbaugh St, Red Oak, IA 51566
- What the county publishesThe sheriff's page states the office 'manages jail operations' but publishes no facility name, bed count, roster, bond instructions, visitation rules or fee schedule
- What was triedThe county's Sheriff page, Departments page and Board of Supervisors page were opened, plus six Board of Supervisors documents returned by search — minutes of December 1 2020, September 14 2021, February 14 2023, November 28 2023, July 23 2024 and February 3 2026, and the agenda of December 9 2025. None carries jail content beyond a routine 'Sheriff's report of fees' line. The County Budget page opened but served no budget documents.
Source: Montgomery County — Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
0/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗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 Jon Spunaugle
- Runs the jailYes — the county's own sheriff page says the sheriff is the county's chief law enforcement officer and manages jail operations; Iowa Code 356.2 gives the sheriff charge and custody of the prisoners in the county jail
- 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 locationLaw Enforcement Center, 106 W Coolbaugh St, Red Oak, IA 51566; phone 712-623-5107; open Monday–Friday 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Montgomery County — Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
In Iowa the official who sets bail at first appearance is a magistrate, and magistrates are appointed, not elected: Iowa Code 602.6501 places 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. District judges are merit-selected under Iowa Code ch. 46: a district judicial nominating commission sends the governor two nominees, the governor appoints one, and the judge then faces a yes/no retention election and a six-year term. Iowa holds no contested judicial elections. The three supervisor appointees on the magistrate appointing commission are the only voter-accountable link in how the bail-setting officer got the job. No Montgomery County magistrate or district judge was named from a source opened in this session.
Iowa District Court (serving Montgomery County) — judicial district not verified from a source opened in this session
- Not found
Magistrate (sets bail at initial appearance, 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
- Montgomery County's own site confirms that the sheriff manages jail operations and gives the Law Enforcement Center address, but it does not name a jail facility, so the named check is 'no'. That the county has a jail is not in doubt from its own words; what is missing is any published detail about it.
- Six Board of Supervisors documents from the county's own file server were opened and read in full (minutes of December 1 2020, September 14 2021, February 14 2023, November 28 2023, July 23 2024 and February 3 2026, and the December 9 2025 agenda). Not one contains a jail inspection report, a capacity or population figure, an inmate-boarding agreement or a detention budget line. The only jail-adjacent item is the routine 'Sheriff's report of fees' on the agenda.
- The county's own County Budget page was opened but served no budget documents, so the budget check is 'no' rather than assumed.
- 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. 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. Montgomery County does not publish its copy on its own domain, including in the supervisors' minutes read here, even though the board is a statutory recipient.
- Iowa has no public statewide dataset of deaths in county custody. Iowa Admin. Code 201—50.22(14) requires the state jail inspection unit 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 published 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. No evidence was found that IDOC publishes those counts, so capacity and 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.
- Board of Supervisors, five members elected by district. Present and named in the minutes of February 3, 2026: Charla Schmid (Board Chair), Mark Peterson, Bryant Amos, Alex Burton and Mike Olson. The board meets every Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. in the Board of Supervisors Meeting Room in the basement of the Montgomery County Courthouse, with a Zoom option.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Montgomery 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