The Detention Center
Ellis County Jail
- Operated byEllis County Sheriff's Office
- Page confirmed by search title onlyA page titled 'Ellis County Jail | Ellis County, KS - Official Website' exists at ellisco.net/347/Ellis-County-Jail, confirmed by its search-result title, but the page itself could not be loaded this session (see below) — so its content, beyond the title naming the jail, is not verified and the 'named' check is not scored yes on that basis alone.
- Capacity (KSA figure, not the county's own site)72 total beds, per the Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile.
- What was triedThe county's own domain, ellisco.net, was reached and its homepage and County Budget page (ellisco.net/381/County-Budget) both loaded successfully — the budget page describes the county's general budget process and points to annual budget-book documents (2011–2020) without breaking out a Sheriff's Office or jail line in the content retrieved, and directs further questions to the county's finance office. However, every attempt to load the jail-specific page (ellisco.net/347/Ellis-County-Jail), the Sheriff's Office page (ellisco.net/102/Sheriff), the inmate-deposit page, the in-custody FAQ, and the 2023 budget-book PDF failed this session with repeated robots.txt fetch errors, despite all of those exact URLs having been returned by a domain-scoped search. No roster, death, PREA, inspection, contract, bond, or fee information was found on any page that actually loaded.
Source: Ellis County — County Budget page · 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 Scott J. Braun
- 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).
- Office address105 West 12th, Hays, KS 67601
- Phone / faxSheriff's Office (785) 625-1040; Jail Administration (785) 625-1050; Fax 785-625-1058
- Staffing (KSA figure, not the county's own site)22 sworn officers, 16 jail staff, 2 office staff, per the Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile, which also lists Sheriff Braun as the Association's Immediate Past President.
- Internal jail administration (KSA figure, not the county's own site)The Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile lists a Jail Administrator, Lt. Dustin Barnes, and a 72-bed capacity — an internal title inside the Sheriff's Office, not an appointed director who replaces the sheriff as statutory jailer.
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Ellis 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). Whether the 23rd Judicial District has adopted nonpartisan/merit selection, and the names of its sitting judges, were not established this session. The 23rd Judicial District elects its district judges on a partisan ballot - the default under Kan. Const. Art. 3 sec. 6. Its voters have not adopted the nonpartisan nominating-commission method available under K.S.A. 20-2901.
District Court — 23rd 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
- Ellis County's own domain (ellisco.net) was reached — the homepage and the County Budget page both loaded — but the specific jail, sheriff, inmate-deposit, and budget-book pages that a domain-scoped search returned all failed to load this session with repeated robots.txt errors, an inconsistency within the same domain rather than a blanket closure. Because none of those specific pages was actually opened, none of the ten checks is scored 'yes' even though a page titled 'Ellis County Jail' evidently exists on the site.
- State-layer finding applies: K.S.A. 75-5228, the 1973 Kansas jail inspection statute, was repealed effective 11 April 1996 (its companion 75-5227 followed 1 July 1996), and nothing replaced it.
- Ellis County is governed by a Board of County Commissioners. The county's own budget page names Phillip Smith-Hanes as a finance-office contact, (785) 628-9410, but the commission's own roster, meeting-schedule, and minutes pages were not reached this session — the sheriff/jail-specific pages on the same domain repeatedly failed to load (see jail notes) and the commission pages were not separately attempted given the shared domain-wide pattern of failures on non-root, non-budget paths.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Ellis 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