The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byLabette County Sheriff's Office, per K.S.A. 19-811
- Address on record718 5th St., Oswego, KS 67356 (Sheriff's Office address)
- Capacity83 beds, per the Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile (not the county's own site; no male/female split given)
- Jail administrator (staff title, not the statutory jailer)Sgt. Gravett, (620) 795-2997
- What was triedlabettecounty.com's own Sheriff's Office pages (sheriffs-office, sheriff-s-office, who-we-serve) were opened but contain no jail name, capacity, budget, deaths, PREA, inspection, contract, bond or fee information; a separate site, www.labettecountykssheriff.org, is linked but was not fetched (not returned by a search and not otherwise in provenance).
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Labette 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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds83 (Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile; not the county's own site)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Darren Eichinger
- TitleLabette County Sheriff
- Runs the jailYes, as statutory jailer under K.S.A. 19-811
- Office address718 5th St., Oswego, KS 67356
- Office phone(620) 795-2565
- Service areaUnincorporated Labette County plus the cities of Angola, Bartlett, Edna, Labette, Mound Valley and Valeda, about 653 square miles and over 19,000 residents, per labettecounty.com
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Labette County — Sheriff's Office · 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). The 11th 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.
- 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 →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- labettecounty.com was fully reachable and its Sheriff's Office and commissioners pages were read. None of the ten items were found published on the county's own domain; the sheriff's office name, address and service area are published, but no jail-specific facility name, roster, capacity, budget, death, PREA, inspection, contract, bond or fee information appears there.
- Board of County Commissioners (three members): Vince Schibi (District One), Terry Weidert (District Two), Tom Barrett (District Three). Meets Mondays at 9 a.m. in the commission room on the first floor of the courthouse in Oswego.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Labette 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