Ford County

The Detention Center

Not found

• Operated byFord County Sheriff's Office
• Facility (per Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile)Established in 2009; total capacity 256 beds, including 2 safety cells and 3 medical cells — not independently confirmed on the county's own site
• What was tried (original pass)A domain-restricted web search found that fordcounty.net publishes a page titled "Jail | Ford County, KS", plus a Sheriff's Office page, a Sheriff FAQs page, and a Commissary page — exactly the kind of pages this audit needs. But every attempt to open fordcounty.net that session, across five different URLs and repeated retries, failed at the fetch stage with a robots.txt timeout. No page on the county's own domain could be read, so the jail's formal name was never confirmed and none of that site's content is cited here.
• Retry pass: one page openedhttps://www.fordcounty.net/419/Bonds loaded successfully, confirming fordcounty.net is reachable at least intermittently. The page is a directory of local bonding/bail agencies (name and phone number for each) and gives a Sheriff's Office contact for jail bond difficulties: "(620) 227-4508 — If you are having difficulties, please contact the On-Duty Detention Sergeant or Staff," confirming the jail has an on-duty Detention Sergeant role. Every other page tried afterward on repeated attempts — the Jail page itself, Population Log, Open Positions, Commissary, Records — failed again with the same robots.txt timeout, so the jail's formal name, capacity confirmation, administrator, budget, PREA status, inspection status, contracts, and fees remain unconfirmed from the county's own site.

Source: Ford County, KS — Bonds · checked 2026-09-17

• ✗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
• ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Ford County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-17. 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 built2009
• Original costNot found
• Paid for byNot found
• Beds256, including 2 safety cells and 3 medical cells, per the Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile — not independently confirmed on the county's own site

The Sheriff

Sheriff William (Bill) Carr

• Runs the jailYes — elected sheriff under K.S.A. 19-811 and 19-1903
• Office11311 E. Comanche, Dodge City, KS 67801 (mailing PO Box 747); phone 620-227-4501; jail administration 620-227-4508; administrative fax 620-227-3284, records fax 620-227-4504
• Other roleAlso serves as Secretary-Treasurer of the Kansas Sheriffs' Association
• Command staff (per Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile)Undersheriff Dale Coleman; Patrol Captain John Hunter; Admin Captain Martha Castillo; Jail Captain Gordon Willard; Jail Lieutenant Cameron Skeen

Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Ford County profile · checked 2026-09-17

The Judges

Kansas decides judicial selection district by district: Kan. Const. Art. 3 §6 makes partisan election of district judges the default, and a judicial district's voters may adopt (or later reject) nonpartisan merit selection under K.S.A. 20-2901; district magistrate judges are elected county by county under K.S.A. 20-336 unless the district uses merit selection, and in most rural counties the magistrate sets bail at first appearance (K.S.A. 20-302b). Ford County's judicial district and judges were not established this session — fordcounty.net could not be opened at the relevant pages (see jail facts). Which method this county's judicial district uses was not established for this record.

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