The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byRussell County Sheriff's Office
- What was triedRussell County's real official government site, https://www.russellcountykansas.com/, was found this session (portal.kansas.gov's russellcountyks.org is a Russell County Economic Development & Convention and Visitors Bureau tourism site, not the county government). The Sheriff's Office landing page (https://www.russellcountykansas.com/220/Sheriff) was opened and names no jail, gives no capacity, budget, roster, contracts, PREA, inspection, bond, or fee information. The County Commissioners page (https://russellcountykansas.com/226/County-Commissioners) was located via search but could not be fetched — repeated robots.txt fetch failures.
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — county profile (Russell County) · 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
- Beds21
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Andrew Van Der Wege
- TitleRussell County Sheriff
- Office contact210 E. 4th, Russell, KS 67665; (785) 483-2151
- Staffing (per Kansas Sheriffs' Association profile)13 sworn staff, 2 support staff, 6 jail staff
- Confirmed on county's own sitehttps://www.russellcountykansas.com/220/Sheriff lists Sheriff Andrew L. VanDerWege, Undersheriff Scott Axtell, and Administrative Assistant Carol Shannon as the office's listed staff
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — county profile (Russell 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 20th 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.
20th 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
- Russell County's real official government site is https://www.russellcountykansas.com/, not https://www.russellcountyks.org/ (a tourism/Economic-Development site that portal.kansas.gov lists) — a finding about the state portal's county-list data, not about Russell County's own transparency.
- The Sheriff's Office landing page (https://www.russellcountykansas.com/220/Sheriff) was opened this session and names only three staff (Sheriff, Undersheriff, Administrative Assistant) and racial-profiling policy items; it publishes no jail name, roster, capacity, budget, contracts, PREA, inspection, bond, or fee information.
- The County Commissioners page could not be fetched this session — repeated robots.txt fetch failures on that path — so board membership and any jail-budget line item remain unconfirmed from the county's own site.
- State-layer finding: K.S.A. 75-5228, the 1973 Kansas jail inspection statute, was repealed effective April 11, 1996, its companion 75-5227 followed July 1, 1996, and nothing replaced it. The Kansas Department of Corrections runs no county-jail program.
- Not confirmed from page content — Russell County's own commissioners page (https://russellcountykansas.com/226/County-Commissioners) was found via search this session but could not be fetched (repeated robots.txt failures). K.S.A. 19-201 requires each Kansas county to have three, five, or seven commissioner districts.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Russell 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