Vanderburgh County, Indiana — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Vanderburgh County Jail

Operated byVanderburgh County Sheriff's Office
Jail address3500 N. Harlan Avenue, Evansville, IN 47711
Capacity (jail page)600 inmates maximum
Rated capacity (2024 annual report)546 operational beds
Average daily population 2024653
Housed out of countyAbout 130 a day in 2024, at Posey, Pike and Perry counties (IN) and Jefferson County (IL)
Size156,722 sq ft; 103 full-time officers
Medical (2024)Quality Correctional Care to 29 Feb 2024; Comprehensive Correctional Care from 1 Mar 2024
Food serviceARAMARK
Phone/video vendorCombined Public Communications (CPC)
Medical co-pays$15 sick call, doctor, dentist; $15 per prescription
Jail AdministratorCaptain David Guetling — Jail Commander

Source: Vanderburgh County Jail 2024 Annual Report · checked 2026-09-20

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✓Beds and daily population
✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
✓Deaths in custody
✗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 — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Vanderburgh County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-20. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds546 operational beds (2024 annual report); jail page says 600 maximum

Since then

2024 annual report says a new jail addition is under construction, moving toward completion in 2025 and 2026

The Sheriff

Sheriff Noah Robinson

Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office operates the Vanderburgh County Jail
How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Ind. Const. art. 6, §2); elected November 2022 per the sheriff's site
Chief Deputy (2024 annual report)Nathan Sugarman

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office home page · checked 2026-09-20

The Judges

Indiana circuit and superior court judges are state judicial officers, not county officials. In most counties they are elected to six-year terms; a few counties choose some judges through a nominating commission followed by retention votes.

Vanderburgh County Circuit Court

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 2026-09-20

The Commissioners and County Council

They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.

What they controlThe three county commissioners own and maintain the jail building and sign its contracts; the seven-member county council adopts the budget and appropriates the jail's money.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and keeps the jail by state law (IC 36-2-13-5).
NoteIndiana counties have a three-member Board of Commissioners and a seven-member County Council (fiscal body). County government site fetch refused, so board pages not opened.
The boardVanderburgh County Board of Commissioners
Where the jail money is decidedNot found

Notes on the record

Sheriff posts Annual Jail Reports (2023, 2024) under IC 36-2-13-12; the 2024 report records two in-custody deaths (20 July: natural causes; 6 December: suicide, in the report's words).
Average daily population in 2024 (653) was above the 546 operational beds; about 130 people a day were housed in other counties' jails.
Inmate Lookup and Recent Bookings pages exist but showed 'temporarily unavailable due to a system upgrade' when opened, so roster is 'no'.
Placing a Bond page explains where and when to post bond, cash or card, and surety bonds.
Remote video visits: 10 free minutes a week, further time at rates published only on the vendor site; phone rates not published; medical co-pays are published but are not phone/video/commissary/booking fees, so fees is 'no'.
Vendors are named (CPC, ARAMARK, medical contractors) but no contract documents were found, so contracts is 'no'.
The annual report does not mention a state inspection; no PREA material found on pages opened.
State inspection/oversight: IDOC Jail Services inspects annually (IC 11-12-4); reports are public record on request but not posted by the state. None found on the county's own site.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Vanderburgh 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 and council members who pay for it.

Names verified 2026-09-20 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered