The Detention Center
Scott County Jail
- Operated byScott County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address400 W. 4th St., Davenport, IA 52801-1104
- Rated capacity394 beds, published on the county's own jail page
- Housing designDorm and flex housing with sub-dayrooms containing showers and phones; handicap accessible male and female housing areas; each housing area has a support corridor with recreation, interview, multipurpose and triage space
- RosterLive roster updated every ten minutes, covering people currently held and those held within the last seven days; federal prisoners and detainees are excluded
- Inmate depositsteam3.inmatecanteen.com by debit or credit card, cash kiosk in the jail visitation lobby, or money order by mail; the page says additional service fees may apply but publishes no dollar amounts
- Phone cardsSold through the commissary website offenderconnect.com or by calling DSI at 814-949-3303; no per-minute rate is published
- Boarding agreement with Jackson CountyNot found on any Scott County page opened. The lead that Scott County was reported in April 2026 paying Jackson County about $55 per day per inmate for overflow was not confirmed by anything Scott County publishes on its own domain
- What was triedhttps://www.scottcountyiowa.gov/sheriff/jail/prea and https://www.scottcountyiowa.gov/sheriff/jail/bond-payment were both refused and could not be opened, so neither PREA results nor bond guidance could be verified; the jail inmate manual PDF linked from search returned a 404
Source: Scott County Jail · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✗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
- Beds394 (rated capacity published on the county jail page)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Tim Lane
- 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 addressScott County Courthouse, 400 W. 4th St., Davenport, IA 52801-1104
- Office phone563-326-8625
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Scott County Sheriff's Office · 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
Notes on the record
- No Scott County copy of an Iowa Department of Corrections jail inspection report was found on the county's own domain. Iowa inspects every jail annually - Iowa Admin. Code 201-50.3 requires the chief jail inspector to visit and inspect each jail in the state at least annually, and 201-50.2(3) allows those visits to be unannounced - but Iowa Code 356.43(4) routes the resulting report only to the IDOC director, the sheriff, the local governing body and the county attorney. Nothing requires anyone to post it, and the state does not. Scott County does not publish its copy on any page that could be opened.
- 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.
- Scott County publishes its jail's rated capacity - 394 beds - directly on its own jail page, which is unusual among Iowa counties and satisfies the capacity check outright.
- The county names a PREA page and a bond payment page in its own jail navigation, but neither could be opened, so both prea and bond_info are recorded as no. The pages appear to exist; the finding is that they could not be verified, not that they are absent.
- No Scott County page opened published a boarding or per-diem agreement with Jackson County or any other county, and no corrections budget figure was found on the county's own domain.
- 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 (Iowa counties have a board of supervisors, not commissioners). No Scott County supervisors page could be opened within the search budget, so the board's size and the supervisors' names are not recorded.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Scott 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