The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byNemaha County Sheriff's Office
- Jail staff (KSA profile)5
- Male beds (KSA profile)17
- Female beds (KSA profile)3
- Annual budget (KSA profile)$950,000
- Dedicated sheriff site found but not openedhttps://nemahaso.org/ — linked from the county's own Sheriff's Office page; WebFetch refused to retrieve it this session (provenance error)
- What was triedhttps://www.nmcoks.us/sheriffs-office (opened — names the sheriff and undersheriff, links to nemahaso.org, no jail capacity/budget/roster data on this page); https://www.nmcoks.us/ (opened — county overview, commission meeting schedule, budget summary mention, no jail-specific figures); https://www.nmcoks.us/district-court (opened — judicial district and judge names)
Source: Nemaha County, Kansas — Sheriff's Office · 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
- Beds20 (17 male, 3 female, per the KSA profile — not confirmed on the county's own site)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Richard Vernon
- TitleNemaha County Sheriff
- Office address212 North Sixth St., Seneca, KS 66538 (KSA profile); the county's own site lists the courthouse at 607 Nemaha St., Seneca, KS 66538
- Phone(785) 336-2311
- UndersheriffRobert Cross
- Sworn staff12
- Support staff11
- Statutory jail dutyK.S.A. 19-811 makes the elected sheriff the charge and custody officer of the county jail and all prisoners in it
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Nemaha County, Kansas — 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 22nd 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.
22nd Judicial District
- Chief Judge John L. Weingart
- District Judge Laura Johnson-McNish
- Magistrate Judge Scott Anson
- 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
- Nemaha County's own site names and describes the Sheriff's Office and links out to a separate sheriff's-office website, nemahaso.org, that could not be opened this session. A general 2026 county budget summary is mentioned as posted, but it was not confirmed to break out jail/detention spending specifically, so 'budget' is scored 'no' for this record.
- K.S.A. 75-5228, the 1973 jail inspection statute, was repealed effective 11 April 1996; the companion statute, K.S.A. 75-5227, was repealed effective 1 July 1996. Nothing replaced them, and the Kansas Department of Corrections runs no county-jail inspection program.
- County Commissioners convene every Monday at 9:00 a.m. in the courthouse. Meeting minutes, budgets, and resolutions are posted on the county site; a 2026 Budget Summary was noted as currently posted (general county budget, not broken out by department).
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Nemaha 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