Jefferson County, Kansas — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Jefferson County Jail

Operated byJefferson County Sheriff's Office
Beds57 total (43 male, 14 female) per Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile
Daily board rate$42.50
Jail administrator named (within Sheriff's Office)Clay McHardie, per Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile — an internal Sheriff's Office position, not a separate county department, so jail_administrator is recorded as null per the statutory sheriff-as-jailer rule
What was triedhttps://www.jfcountyks.com/ and https://www.jfcountyks.com/373/Sheriffs-Office and https://jfcountyks.com/373/Sheriffs-Office all returned ROBOTS_DISALLOWED errors on every attempt; the county's separate sheriff's-office domain, jeffersoncountykssheriff.com, was named on the Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile but never appeared in a WebSearch result, so it could not be fetched under the provenance rule

Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Jefferson County profile · 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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Jefferson 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 builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds57 total / 43 male / 14 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 Bacon

TitleJefferson County Sheriff
Office address1360 Walnut, Oskaloosa, KS 66066
Phone(785) 863-2765
Staffing31 sworn, 4 support, 17 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

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Jefferson 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 Jefferson, bail at first appearance is set by a district magistrate judge under K.S.A. 20-302b. Jefferson 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

Still needed

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

Jefferson County's own website (jfcountyks.com) refused every fetch attempt with a robots.txt failure, on the homepage, the Sheriff's Office page, and the government/departments page, so none of the ten transparency checks could be verified against the county's own site. The Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile (a private association) was used only for the sheriff's name, staffing figures, and jail administrator's name, never to satisfy a check.
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 portal.kansas.gov and the county's own site listing (jfcountyks.com/27/Government was identified via search), but the page itself could not be fetched (robots.txt error), so member names, board page content, and minutes could not be confirmed directly.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Jefferson 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