The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byClay County Sheriff's Office
- What was openedClay County's own site (claycountykansas.org) was reached this session at /216/Sheriff-Office and /342/Jail-Visitation. The Sheriff-Office page carries only a mission statement; it does not name the jail, give an address, capacity, or administrator.
- Jail visitation rules (published)Local-inmate visiting Sun/Wed 1-4pm; out-of-county-inmate visiting Sat 1-4pm; 30-minute sessions in booths; immediate family only, one visit per week; commissary cash deposits accepted during visitation. No phone/video-visit rates or bond guidance appear on this page.
- What was tried and blocked/27/Government, /226/Taxes, /sitemap, /directory.aspx?did=18 (Sheriff staff directory), and the linked 2023 budget PDF (/DocumentCenter/View/1359/Clay-County-2023-Budget) each returned a robots.txt fetch failure (ROBOTS_DISALLOWED / ConnectTimeout) this session and could not be opened, so commissioner names, a detention budget line, and additional jail detail were not obtained from the county's own site.
Source: Clay County, KS — Jail Visitation · checked 2026-09-17
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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Alan Benninga
- Runs the jailYes — K.S.A. 19-811 gives the sheriff charge and custody of the county jail and its prisoners; K.S.A. 19-1903 makes the sheriff responsible for the manner in which it is kept.
- How the office is filledElected countywide for a four-year term (K.S.A. 19-801a); not one of Kansas's two structural exceptions (Riley County has no sheriff; Wyandotte County's sheriff is separately elected within a consolidated government).
- Office contactPO Box 115, Clay Center, KS 67432; (785) 632-5601
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — county profile · checked 2026-09-17
The Judges
Kansas decides judicial selection district by district under Kan. Const. Art. 3 §6 and K.S.A. 20-2901. In most rural Kansas counties the district magistrate judge sets bail (K.S.A. 20-302b). The 21st Judicial District has adopted the nonpartisan method: a local nominating commission of lawyers and non-lawyers sends the Governor a list of names, the Governor appoints, and the judge then faces retention votes. Kansas districts choose this by ballot under K.S.A. 20-2901; partisan election is the default they opted out of.
District Court — 21st Judicial District
- 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 2026-09-17
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
- Clay County's own site was opened this session (Sheriff-Office and Jail-Visitation pages) and neither page publishes any of the ten transparency items. Several other pages on the same domain (Government, Taxes, sitemap, staff directory, the 2023 budget PDF) returned robots.txt fetch failures this session and could not be opened, so this is a genuine but partial look at the site — not every page was reachable.
- K.S.A. 75-5228, the 1973 Kansas jail inspection statute, was repealed effective April 11, 1996 (its companion 75-5227 followed July 1, 1996) and nothing replaced it — no Kansas agency has statutory authority to inspect this or any county jail. (Kansas state-layer finding; K.S.A. 75-5228, https://ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch75/075_052_0028.html)
- Governed by a Board of County Commissioners under K.S.A. 19-201 et seq. The county's own Government page (/27/Government) and site map could not be opened this session (robots.txt fetch failures), so the current roster, meeting schedule and minutes were not confirmed from claycountykansas.org.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Clay 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 2026-09-17 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered