The Detention Center
Palo Alto County Jail
- Operated byPalo Alto County Sheriff's Office
- Jail phone712-852-3535
- Sheriff's office address2002 10th Street, P.O. Box 126, Emmetsburg, Iowa 50536 — the Jail page publishes no separate street address for the facility
- VisitationSeven days a week, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., scheduled 24 hours in advance; electronic video visitation, one free 15-minute visit per week per person, additional 15-minute sessions $5 cash; photo identification required
- Inmate telephonePhone cards bought through the commissary from Reliance Telephone in $20, $50 and $100 denominations; family may buy them online
- Room and board$50 per day for convicted inmates 18 and over; work release board $35 per day; GPS electronic monitoring $6 per day
- FY27 jail budget$586,195 for the Jail plus $10,000 for Jail Room & Board, against $1,513,846 for the Sheriff — as adopted in the June 23, 2026 Board of Supervisors minutes
- Beds, rated capacity, daily populationNot found — the Jail page publishes no bed count and no population figure
- What was triedhttps://paloaltosheriff.com/jail/ (opened); https://paloaltosheriff.com/ (opened); https://paloaltosheriff.com/warrants/ (opened — a warrant list, not a custody roster); https://paloaltocounty.iowa.gov/departments/sheriff/ (opened — it only forwards to paloaltosheriff.com); no PREA, inspection, death-in-custody or bail-posting page was found on either domain
Source: Palo Alto County Sheriff — Jail · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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
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 John D. King
- TitlePalo Alto County Sheriff
- Runs the jailYes — Iowa Code 356.2 gives the sheriff charge and custody of the prisoners in the county jail; the sheriff's office publishes its own Jail page
- How the office is filledElected countywide to a four-year term (Iowa Code 331.651). The county's 2025 officials directory records 'John King, County Sheriff-4 yr. Term 1/1/25-12/31/28 Emmetsburg'
- Office address2002 10th Street, P.O. Box 126, Emmetsburg, Iowa 50536
- Office phone712-852-3535 (fax 712-852-3914)
- Chief DeputySeth Nelson (county 2025 officials directory)
- Deputies named by the countyThomas Schultes (Graettinger), Kyle Hagen, Travis Lampe, Ben Morey, Matthew Veon (West Bend), Ryan Reynolds; clerk Melanie Rouse
- StaffingThe sheriff's site states the office keeps 'a Deputy, Communications Operator and Jailer on duty every hour of every day'
- CorroborationNamed as Sheriff on the county's own staff directory at https://paloaltocounty.iowa.gov/staff-directory/ (John King, Sheriff, 712.852.3535, jking@paloaltosheriff.com) and in the county's 2025 officials directory PDF
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Palo Alto County Sheriff — home page · 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, and Iowa magistrates are appointed, not elected: 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 (Iowa Code 602.6501) — appoints the county's magistrates to four-year terms (Iowa Code 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, and are not added to the vote line.
Magistrate — sets bail at first appearance (Iowa Code 804.22)
- Not found
Iowa District Court — judicial district serving Palo Alto County
- Not found
Still needed
- 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
- The Palo Alto County Sheriff's Office runs its own website at paloaltosheriff.com, separate from the county domain. The county's own Sheriff page (https://paloaltocounty.iowa.gov/departments/sheriff/) carries nothing but a link to it. A sheriff's office on its own separate domain is still the county publishing, so both domains are treated as first-party here.
- Sheriff John D. King is named on the sheriff's own site, on the county's staff directory page, and in the county's 2025 officials directory PDF, which records the office as a four-year term running 1/1/25 to 12/31/28.
- 'fees' passes on the Jail page, which publishes actual rates: one free 15-minute video visit per week per person with additional 15-minute sessions at $5 cash, Reliance Telephone phone cards at $20/$50/$100 through the commissary, room and board at $50 per day for convicted inmates 18 and over, work release board at $35 per day and GPS electronic monitoring at $6 per day.
- 'budget' passes on the county's own June 23, 2026 Board of Supervisors minutes, which record the adopted FY27 figures '29 Jail 586,195', '32 Jail Room & Board 10,000' and '05 Sheriff 1,513,846'.
- 'roster' is recorded no. The sheriff's site publishes a warrant list, not a list of who is in custody now; the copy opened was labelled 'warrantlist02.17', last modified February 17, 2023, and carried no bond amounts, though the page says it is updated weekly.
- 'capacity' is recorded no. The Jail page publishes no bed count and no daily population. The page carries an image captioned 1908, but no construction date is stated in the page text, so year_built is recorded Not found rather than inferred from a caption.
- No bail-posting guidance, PREA audit, inspection result, death in custody or inmate-boarding contract was found on either paloaltosheriff.com or paloaltocounty.iowa.gov.
- Palo Alto County posts a deep archive of weekly board minutes (2015 through 2026) as PDFs on its own domain. That archive is the most likely place a county copy of the IDOC annual jail inspection report would surface, since the board is a statutory recipient under Iowa Code 356.43(4). None of the minutes opened contained one.
- Iowa inspects every jail every year but does not publish the report. Iowa Code 356.43 and Iowa Admin. Code r. 201—50.3 require the chief jail inspector to visit and inspect each jail in the state at least annually, and r. 201—50.2(3) allows those visits to be unannounced, with jail staff required to produce all books, records, medical records, data, documents and accounts. But Iowa Code 356.43(4) routes the resulting report only to 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-inspection section. This county does not publish its copy. No inspection report for this county was found on its own domain.
- Deaths in custody: Iowa has no public dataset. Iowa Admin. Code r. 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, use of force or prisoner self-injury, and Iowa Code 127.3(1) requires an autopsy for a death in a jail or in police custody where no natural disease process accounts for it. Neither duty produces a published number. The 'deaths' check passes only if the county itself publishes a death in its custody, and this county does not.
- 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, but no evidence was found that IDOC publishes it and there is no state jail-population page, so capacity can pass only on the county's own numbers.
- Iowa county jails are funded by the county — property and local option sales taxes and county general fund appropriations. Federal money reaches them only through per-diem boarding, SCAAP and grants.
- Open records: 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 delay taken to screen a record for confidentiality at twenty calendar days and says it ordinarily should not exceed ten business days.
- Five-member Board of Supervisors elected by district. The county's 2025 officials directory records: District 1 Keith Wirtz (Mallard, term 1/1/23–12/31/26); District 2 Craig Merrill (Emmetsburg, 1/1/23–12/31/26); District 3 Roger Faulstick (Emmetsburg, 1/1/25–12/31/28); District 4 Ronald D. Graettinger (Graettinger, 1/1/25–12/31/28); District 5 Linus Solberg (Cylinder, 1/1/23–12/31/26). Linus Solberg chaired the June 23, 2026 meeting, at which all five were present. The board meets at the Courthouse, 1010 Broadway, Emmetsburg, and posts weekly agendas and minutes as PDFs back to 2015. Directory: https://paloaltocounty.iowa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Palo-Alto-County-Directory-2025.pdf
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Palo Alto 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