The Detention Center
Wapello County Jail
- Operated byWapello County Sheriff's Office
- Detention commandJason Fuller — Jail Administrator (Chaylee Goodvin is Assistant Jail Administrator)
- Beds148 (county Sheriff and Jail page)
- Sheriff and Jail address330 W 2nd St., Ottumwa, IA 52501. The jail page's own contact block displays 101 W. 4th St., Ottumwa, which the county's contact page gives as the Wapello County Courthouse address; both figures are as published.
- How it is runThe county describes it as a "direct supervision jail" staffed around the clock by correctional officers, dispatchers and kitchen staff, handling court appearances, medical and mental-health appointments and inmate transports
- VisitationMonday–Thursday 6:30 p.m.–9:00 p.m., conducted on telephone and video monitors in the jail lobby; state-issued photo ID required and the visitor must be on the inmate's list; "Inmates are allowed 30 minutes per week total visitation"; children under 3 need not be listed but must be supervised
- Telephone rates"$0.30 per minute/$0.15 per SMS message" — published by the county on its own inmates page. Calls are bought through the commissary account on the Prodigy system.
- Commissary depositsMoney order, cashier's check, credit card via Smartdeposit (1-866-394-0490), Western Union, or a kiosk in the jail lobby. No deposit-fee schedule is published.
- Remote video visitsProvided through the Prodigy Remote Video Visitation system. No rate is published.
- RosterThe county does not host a roster on its own domain; the Sheriff and Jail pages link out to a vendor portal (wapello-so-ia.zuercherportal.com) and to a commercial phone app. Off-domain vendor listings are not counted here.
- Average daily populationNot published on the county's site
- What was triedThe Board of Supervisors agendas and minutes index (https://www.wapellocounty.org/board_of_supervisors/agendas_minutes/) was opened and read down to the September 2026 meetings; nothing on it names a jail inspection, a Department of Corrections item, an inmate housing agreement or a per-diem rate. The minutes PDF for September 8, 2026 could not be opened.
Source: Wapello County — Jail (Sheriff's Office) · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓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
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.
- Beds148
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Don Phillips
- 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 own department is titled "Sheriff and Jail" and the jail page sits inside it.
- 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
- Office330 W 2nd St., Ottumwa, IA 52501; 641-684-4350 and 641-682-1414; office hours Monday–Friday 8:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
- Chief DeputyMarty Wonderlin
- Agency sizeThe county's Sheriff and Jail page states "a budgeted staff of 48 employee's and operate 24 hours a day everyday," with 12 patrol deputies covering roughly 800 miles of unincorporated roadway
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Wapello County — Sheriff and Jail · 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
- Wapello County's seat is Ottumwa. The town of Wapello is not in this county — it is the seat of Louisa County. The two are often confused.
- capacity is marked yes on the published 148-bed figure. Wapello County does not publish an average daily population or any monthly count on its own site.
- budget is marked no. The county publishes that the Sheriff and Jail department has a budgeted staff of 48, but no dollar appropriation for the jail or the sheriff was found on a page opened here.
- roster is marked no because the county publishes no roster on its own domain — its pages link out to a third-party vendor portal, which under this project's rules is not the county publishing.
- fees is marked yes: the county publishes inmate telephone rates of $0.30 per minute and $0.15 per SMS message on its own inmates page. It does not publish a video-visit rate or a commissary price list.
- bond_info is marked no, but the county does publish something close. The County Attorney's Criminal Justice Process page explains that a defendant appears before a judge within 24 hours of arrest and that "Bond is then set, usually based on a preset bond schedule prepared by the Iowa Supreme Court," and that a defendant may qualify for a release programme that does not require a bond. It does not explain how or where to post a bond, which is what this check asks for. Page: https://www.wapellocounty.org/attorney/criminal_justice_process/
- 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 — three members: Darren Batterson (Chair), Carrie Teninty (Vice Chair) and Bryan Ziegler. Board office 641-683-4630.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Wapello 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