The Detention Center
Marion County Jail
- Operated byMarion County Sheriff's Office
- Address202 S 4th St, Marion, KS 66861 (same building as the Sheriff's Office)
- CommissaryInmates become eligible after 72 hours in custody, limited to $20/week of approved items
- Medical co-pay$10 co-pay for a doctor visit, $3 co-pay per prescription
- VisitationTuesday and Thursday, 4–6 p.m.; up to 4 approved visitors per inmate, 2 at a time, 25-minute sessions
- RosterThe Sheriff's page links to a JailTracker roster hosted at omsweb.public-safety-cloud.com/jtclientweb/jailtracker/index/Marion_County_KS
- Also sourced toMarion County — Inmate Reporting Rules — https://www.marioncoks.net/259/Inmate-Reporting-Rules
- Also sourced toMarion County — Sheriff — https://www.marioncoks.net/257/Sheriff
Source: Marion County — Marion County Jail Information · 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 — 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
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 Jeff Soyez
- Runs the jailYes — statutory jailer under K.S.A. 19-811
- How the office is filledElected countywide for a four-year term (K.S.A. 19-801a)
- UndersheriffLarry Starkey
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Marion County — Sheriff · 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 8th 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.
8th Judicial District — District Court
- Susan Robson
- 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
- The county publishes annual budget PDFs at marioncoks.net/211/Budget-Levy (e.g. the 2026 County Budget), but the linked PDF was not machine-readable through WebFetch and no Sheriff/Jail/Corrections line item could be confirmed, so 'budget' is marked no rather than yes.
- 'fees' is marked yes on the strength of the published commissary weekly limit ($20) and medical co-pays ($10/$3); no phone or video-visit rate was found published.
- Roster access is via a JailTracker system (a legitimate jail-management vendor), linked directly from the county's own Sheriff page — not one of the excluded commercial aggregators (inmateroster/jailroster/countyoffice.org/sheriffsjc.com).
- Board of County Commissioners (K.S.A. 19-201).
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Marion 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