The Detention Center
Ringgold County Jail
- Operated byRinggold County Sheriff's Office, Jail Division
- Jail address801 W South Street, Mount Ayr, IA
- BailThe county's own jail page says the only accepted payment for bail is cash or a surety bond, and that bond is set by a magistrate judge, typically within 24 hours of arrest
- Charges and bond amountsAvailable only by calling 641-464-3921 or by going to 801 W South Street in Mount Ayr - there is no online list
- Phone cards$10, sold at the Law Enforcement Center or through www.reliancetelephone.com
- CommissaryAccounts may be opened with deposited funds for available items; no item prices are published
- Jail Division staff named by the countyHeather Buckner, Alee Haidsiak, Anna Johnson, Tracy Link, Jill Tomas and Jacey Thomas, listed as dispatch and jailer staff
- Rated capacityNot found on any Ringgold County page opened
- Separate jail administratorNone - the county directory lists no jail administrator position, and the elected sheriff is the statutory jailer under Iowa Code 356.2
Source: Ringgold County Sheriff - Jail Division · 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 — 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
- ✓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 Rob Haley
- Runs the jailYes - 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)
- Office address801 West South Street, Mount Ayr, IA 50854
- Office phone641-464-3921
- Chief deputyNathan Nickle
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Ringgold County Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Iowa district judges are merit-selected, not elected in contested races: 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. Bail at first appearance is set by a magistrate, not a district judge: Iowa Code 804.22 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 magistrate or 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, and are not added to the vote line.
Iowa District Court - district judges for this county's judicial election district
- Not found
Magistrate - the officer who fixes 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
- Iowa does inspect this jail every year, but nobody publishes the result. Iowa Code 356.43 requires the Iowa Department of Corrections 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 in the state at least annually; 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. The standards themselves are mandatory under Iowa Code 356.36. But Iowa Code 356.43(4) routes the resulting report to only four places - the IDOC director, the sheriff, the local governing body and the county attorney - and nothing requires anyone to post it. doc.iowa.gov has no jails or jail-inspection section. This county does not publish its own copy on any page that could be opened, so state_inspection is recorded empty. That is the finding, not a gap in the search.
- Ringgold County runs its own jail - the sheriff's office has a Jail Division at 801 W South Street, Mount Ayr - so this is not a county that boards its prisoners elsewhere.
- The bond_info check is recorded yes: the county's own jail page states plainly that the only accepted payment for bail is cash or a surety bond, and that a magistrate judge sets bond, typically within 24 hours of arrest. That matches Iowa Code 804.22, which puts bail-setting at first appearance in the magistrate's hands.
- The fees check is recorded yes on a single published price - $10 for a phone card, sold at the Law Enforcement Center or through Reliance Telephone. No per-minute call rate, video visit rate or commissary item price is published.
- There is no online roster. The county directs anyone wanting a person's charges or bond amount to phone 641-464-3921 or come to the Law Enforcement Center in person, so roster is recorded no.
- No rated capacity, bed count, corrections budget figure or boarding agreement was found on any Ringgold County page opened.
- Iowa publishes no 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 duty produces a public number, and this county publishes none of its own.
- Public records in Iowa run under Iowa Code chapter 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: a reasonable delay for this purpose shall not exceed twenty calendar days and ordinarily should not exceed ten business days.
- Iowa county jails run on county property and local taxes. Federal money reaches them only through per-diem boarding, SCAAP and grants.
- Board of Supervisors, three members serving four-year terms: Randy Taylor (term expires 2026), Colby Holmes (term expires 2028) and Steve Knapp (term expires 2028). The board meets regularly on Mondays at 9:00 a.m. and meetings are open to the public. Other county officials named in the county directory include Auditor Amanda Waske, Attorney Mike Wells, Recorder Kisha Martin and Treasurer Debra Cannon. No budget document is linked from the board's page.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Ringgold 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