The Detention Center
Not found as a published facility name — the county lists only "Sheriff & Jail" at 100 N. Main St., Toledo
- Operated byTama County Sheriff's Office
- Detention commandBrian Randall — Jail Administrator
- Address100 N. Main St., Toledo, IA 52342 (county contact page)
- Jail line641-484-3760, listed by the county as Communications/Jail
- Jail administratorBrian Randall (county contact page)
- A jail inspection is on the county recordThe Board of Supervisors minutes of May 11, 2026, reproduced in the May 18, 2026 board agenda packet, record that "at 10:30 a.m., the Board held a work session with the Sheriff to discuss the jail inspection conducted earlier that morning, as well as the condition of the current jail facility and its future needs." The county publishes that the inspection happened and that the board discussed it. It does not publish the inspector's report or any of its findings.
- Beds and daily populationNot published on the county's own site
- Roster, bond schedule, fee scheduleNone published on the county's own domain
- What was triedhttps://tamacounty.iowa.gov/sheriff.html redirects off the county domain to https://www.tamacountysheriff.org/, which could not be opened here, so nothing from the sheriff's separate site is cited. https://www.tamacounty.iowa.gov/sheriff/ and https://www.tamacounty.iowa.gov/supervisors/ could not be opened. The board minutes of July 7, 2025 (https://tamacounty.iowa.gov/files/meetings/2025-07-07_minutes_8901.pdf) were read in full and contain no jail item beyond approval of the Sheriff's Quarterly Report.
Source: Tama County Board of Supervisors, agenda packet of May 18, 2026 (containing the minutes of May 11, 2026) · 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. Iowa county jails run on county property and local taxes; no federal funding is claimed here.
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found. The May 11, 2026 board minutes record a work session on "the condition of the current jail facility and its future needs", but no project, cost or decision is published.
The Sheriff
Sheriff Casey Schmidt
- Runs the jailYes — the elected sheriff, under Iowa Code 356.2 ("The sheriff shall have charge and custody of the prisoners in the jail or other prisons of the sheriff's county") and Iowa Code 331.653(35). The county's contact page lists the office as "Sheriff & Jail" at one address with a separate jail phone line.
- How the office is filledElected to a four-year term under Iowa Code 331.651; the sheriff must be a certified peace officer or complete basic training within a year, and on a vacancy the first deputy assumes the office
- Office and jail address100 N. Main St., Toledo, IA 52342; 641-484-4111 administration, 641-484-3760 communications/jail
- Chief DeputyJoe Quandt (county contact page)
- Jurisdiction and the Meskwaki SettlementThe Meskwaki Settlement of the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa lies within Tama County's boundaries. The Settlement is tribal land with its own tribal police; detention there is not under the county sheriff. The county sheriff's charge under Iowa Code 356.2 runs to prisoners in the county jail. Neither the county nor the tribe publishes, on any page opened here, the name of a tribal detention facility, so none is named. This is how jurisdiction is allocated in law, not a shortcoming of either government.
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Tama County — Contact Tama County Government & Departments · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Iowa's 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
- named is marked no because the county publishes no facility name — its contact page lists the office only as "Sheriff & Jail" with an address, a jail phone line and a named jail administrator. The jail plainly exists and the county identifies where it is; it does not give it a published name.
- inspections is marked no on a fine distinction worth stating. Tama County's own board minutes of May 11, 2026 confirm that a jail inspection was conducted that morning and that the Board of Supervisors held a work session with the Sheriff about it. That is closer to the Iowa inspection record than most counties get. But the county publishes no report and no finding from it, and the check asks whether an inspection result is published. The fact of the inspection is on the county's record; the result is not.
- The Meskwaki Settlement of the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa lies within Tama County. A reservation inside a county's boundaries does not place detention there under the county sheriff. The Tama County Sheriff has charge of prisoners in the county jail under Iowa Code 356.2; tribal law enforcement is the tribe's own. No tribal detention facility is named here because neither the county nor the tribe published one on any page opened for this entry. This is the ordinary allocation of jurisdiction, not a gap.
- Iowa Code chapter 22 gives every person the right to examine and copy a public record (22.2). 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.
- Iowa has no public 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 — but neither duty produces a public number.
- 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, so state_inspection is recorded empty. That is the finding, not a gap in the search.
- Board of Supervisors — five members, one per district: Curt Hilmer (1st District), David Turner (2nd District), Heather Knebel (3rd District), Mark Doland (4th District, listed as Chair on the county contact page) and Curt Kupka (5th District). The board offices are at 104 W. State St., Toledo. Names are taken from the May 18, 2026 agenda packet, the July 7, 2025 minutes and the county contact page.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Tama 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