The Detention Center
Not scored. The county's own website was not reachable in the session that produced this record, so its disclosures were never examined. This is a gap in the research, not a finding about the county.
- Operated byLincoln County Sheriff's Office, per K.S.A. 19-811
- What was triedThe Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile lists no jail capacity, staff or budget fields for Lincoln County. The county's own site was located at both lincolncoks.com and www.lincolncoks.com; both failed with a TLS certificate hostname mismatch ('certificate is not valid for lincolncoks.com'). A specific Sheriff subpage found through WebSearch, lincolncoks.com/Sheriff/tabid/5989/Default.aspx, failed with a repeated https-to-http redirect loop. No page on the county's domain could be opened.
- RETRYlincolncoks.com/Sheriff/tabid/5989/Default.aspx was fetched again this session (rather than the bare domain root, which previously failed on a TLS certificate mismatch); it now fails with the same https-to-http redirect loop seen on Lane and Kiowa, reproduced on two separate attempts.
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Lincoln County profile · checked 2026-09-17
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 Dustin Florence
- TitleLincoln County Sheriff
- Runs the jailYes, as statutory jailer under K.S.A. 19-811
- Office address116 North Second, Lincoln, KS 67455
- Office phone785-524-4479
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Lincoln 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). The 12th 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
Notes on the record
- Lincoln County's own site could not be opened at all: both lincolncoks.com and www.lincolncoks.com failed with a TLS certificate hostname mismatch, and a Sheriff subpage surfaced by WebSearch failed with an unresolvable redirect loop. audit.checks is left empty because the site could not genuinely be examined, not because the county discloses nothing.
- RETRY (this session): the earlier TLS certificate-mismatch finding was on the bare domain; a specific Sheriff subpage found via WebSearch was fetched twice this session and both times hit an unresolvable https-to-http redirect loop instead. Either way, no page on lincolncoks.com could be opened. audit.checks remains empty.
- Board of County Commissioners, per K.S.A. 19-201. Commissioner names could not be confirmed — the county's own website could not be opened (certificate error).
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Lincoln 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