The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byMeade County Sheriff's Office (statutory jailer, K.S.A. 19-811)
- Inmate custody-status lookupmeadeco.org/190/Inmate-Search links out to the statewide Kansas VINE system (866-574-8463) for individual custody-status checks; it is not a county-published roster
- What was triedmeadeco.org home page (opened — courthouse address/hours only), /304/Office-of-Sheriff (opened — generic boilerplate, no name or jail detail), /190/Inmate-Search (opened — Kansas VINE only); /179/Sheriff, /322/Staff and /192/Departments all failed to fetch (robots.txt errors)
- Also sourced toMeade County — Office of Sheriff — https://www.meadeco.org/304/Office-of-Sheriff
- Also sourced toMeade County — Inmate Search — https://www.meadeco.org/190/Inmate-Search
Source: Meade County — Home · 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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Doug Ritter
- 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)
- Name sourceMeade County's own Office of Sheriff page is template boilerplate and does not name the current sheriff; name sourced to the Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Meade County · 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 16th Judicial District elects its district judges on a partisan ballot - the default under Kan. Const. Art. 3 sec. 6. Its voters have not adopted the nonpartisan nominating-commission method available under K.S.A. 20-2901.
16th Judicial District — District Court
- 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
- Meade County's own site was partially accessible (home page, Office of Sheriff, Inmate Search loaded; Sheriff staff page, Staff and Departments pages failed with robots.txt errors).
- The county's inmate-lookup page routes to the state-run Kansas VINE system rather than publishing its own roster, so 'roster' is marked no.
- Board of County Commissioners (K.S.A. 19-201); no commissioners page on meadeco.org could be successfully opened.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Meade 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