The Detention Center
Harvey County Detention Center
- Operated byHarvey County Sheriff's Office
- Population servedHolds people admitted by local, state or federal law enforcement agencies, both pretrial and sentenced
- Staffing (county site)Detention Center Captain KC Kersenbrock; 20 detention deputies and 2 office deputies (per harveycounty.com/departments/sheriff.html)
- ServicesMedical and mental-health care; PREA compliance described as maintained (no audit report or result published); GED, anger-management, meditation, parenting, substance-abuse support-group, spiritual, transition and mentoring programs
- Bond infoBond amounts obtainable by contacting detention center staff; bonds may be paid in cash or through a bonding agent approved by the Ninth Judicial District of Kansas
- Video visitationFree on-site video conferencing in the lobby (first-come, first-served); paid video visitation available remotely through a vendor called Prodigy, described only as "at a cost to visitors" with no rate published
- Fingerprinting fee$20 for up to three cards per person, cash only, unrelated to detention fees
- What was tried but not foundNo bed count, population count, budget figure, death-in-custody disclosure, PREA audit result, independent inspection result, or inter-agency contract rate was published on the county's own site
Source: Harvey County — Detention Center · checked 2026-09-17
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗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
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 Chad Gay
- Runs the jailYes — K.S.A. 19-811 gives the sheriff charge and custody of the county jail and its prisoners
- Office address120 E 7, Newton, KS 67114
- Phone(316) 284-6960
- Staffing (KSA profile)Sworn 17, Support 3, Jail staff 21; jail capacity 133 beds (105 male, 28 female); out-of-county inmate rate $55.00/day
- Discrepancy on the county's own siteharveycounty.com/departments/sheriff/sheriff.html displays a mission-statement page naming "Sheriff T. Walton (sworn in January 12, 2009)" — clearly stale, unupdated content, not the current sheriff. The current sheriff's name is taken from the Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile, not from this outdated county page. The county's own site does separately list Shawn Chapman as current Undersheriff (harveycounty.com/departments/sheriff/sheriff-contacts/172-shawn-chapman.html).
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Harvey 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). Harvey County sits in the 9th Judicial District with McPherson County; the 9th District's own kscourts.gov page could not be reached this session (no provenance for a direct URL, and the district-courts index page returned a 403), so no judge names could be verified for it. The 9th 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 — 9th 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
- Harvey County's own site names its jail (the Harvey County Detention Center) and publishes bond-posting guidance (cash or an approved bonding agent through the Ninth Judicial District) — the two checks marked 'yes' here. It also describes PREA compliance and video visitation in general terms without publishing an audit result, a rate, or a roster, so those checks remain 'no' rather than being credited on a vague mention. The Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile (a private association, not the county) separately gives 133 beds and a $55/day out-of-county rate, but per instructions that source cannot satisfy a county transparency check.
- State-layer finding (plains_states.json, KS): K.S.A. 75-5228, the 1973 Kansas jail inspection statute, was repealed effective April 11, 1996; its companion K.S.A. 75-5227 was repealed effective July 1, 1996. Nothing has replaced them — the Kansas Department of Corrections runs no county-jail program and the Kansas Sheriffs' Association runs no jail standards or inspection program. No Kansas agency has had authority to inspect an adult county jail since 1996. (https://ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch75/075_052_0028.html ; https://ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch75/075_052_0027.html)
- Board of County Commissioners (Kansas's default three-member form under K.S.A. 19-201). This session opened harveycounty.com's sheriff and administration pages but did not locate or open a commissioners roster page, so the current roster is not confirmed.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Harvey 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