The Detention Center
Jackson County Jail
- Operated byJackson County Sheriff's Office
- Address210 US 75 Hwy, Holton, KS 66436
- Beds108 total (86 male, 22 female) per Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile
- RosterThe Sheriff's Office site (jasoks.org) references a current jail roster available through an 'Agency Data' section
- Inmate servicesInmate Commissary, Inmate Telephone, and Inmate Video Visitation offered through vendor CityTeleCoin; specific rate schedule not shown on the pages reviewed
- PREAA 'Prea-2019-report.pdf' is published on jasoks.org, but the PDF returned no extractable/machine-readable text when fetched, so its findings could not be read
- What was triedhttps://www.jacksoncountyks.com/ and https://www.jacksoncountyks.com/195/Board-of-County-Commissioners and https://www.jacksoncountyks.com/Directory.aspx?did=11 all returned ROBOTS_DISALLOWED or 403 errors; the Sheriff's Office's own separate site, jasoks.org, was reachable via search results
- Also sourced toJackson County Sheriff's Office — Registered Offenders / jail services page — https://www.jasoks.org/programs/registered-offenders/
- Also sourced toJackson County Sheriff's Office — PREA 2019 report (file present; text not extractable) — https://www.jasoks.org/wp-content/uploads/Prea-2019-report.pdf
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Jackson County profile · checked 2026-09-17
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✓PREA audits
- ✗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
- Beds108 total / 86 male / 22 female (per Kansas Sheriffs' Association, not the county's own site, so not used to satisfy 'capacity' check)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Tim Morse
- TitleJackson County Sheriff
- UndersheriffJohn Calhoon
- Office address210 U.S. Highway 75, Holton, KS 66436
- Phone785-364-2251
- Staffing22 sworn, 2 support, 13 jail staff (Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile)
- Runs the jailYes, as statutory jailer under K.S.A. 19-811
- How the office is filledElected countywide for a four-year term under K.S.A. 19-801a
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Jackson County profile · checked 2026-09-17
The Judges
Kansas Constitution Art. 3 §6 makes partisan election of district judges the default; a judicial district may instead adopt nonpartisan (merit) selection under K.S.A. 20-2901. In most rural Kansas counties, including presumptively Jackson, bail at first appearance is set by a district magistrate judge under K.S.A. 20-302b. Jackson County's judicial district number and selection method were not established from sources reviewed in this pass. Which method this county's judicial district uses was not established for this record.
District Court (judicial district not independently confirmed)
- 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
- Jackson County's main civic site (jacksoncountyks.com) refused every fetch attempt (robots.txt failures and a 403 on its staff directory), so commissioners, budget, and court information could not be verified there. Jail-related findings instead come from the Sheriff's Office's own separate site, jasoks.org, which does publish the jail's name/roster reference and a PREA report file (2019), even though the PREA PDF's contents could not be read.
- State inspection: repealed. K.S.A. 75-5228, Kansas's 1973 adult jail inspection statute, was repealed effective April 11, 1996 (companion K.S.A. 75-5227 repealed effective July 1, 1996); nothing replaced it, and the Kansas Department of Corrections runs no county-jail inspection program.
- Board of County Commissioners exists per the county's official site (jacksoncountyks.com/195/Board-of-County-Commissioners was identified via search), but the page itself could not be fetched (robots/403 error), so member names, the board page content, and minutes could not be confirmed directly.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Jackson 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