The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated bySheridan County Sheriff's Office
- Jail administrator (per KSA profile)Brandon Carver, the sheriff himself
- Types of holds (KSA profile field)8
- Daily board rate (KSA profile)$35.00
- Bed capacity, male/female splitNot stated on the KSA profile or the county's own site
- Out-of-county inmates housedNot stated on the KSA profile or the county's own site
- Annual budgetNot stated on the KSA profile or the county's own site
- County's own website, examined this sessionhttps://www.sheridancountyks.gov/ (home page) and https://www.sheridancountyks.gov/staff-directory and https://www.sheridancountyks.gov/staff-directory/Sheriff — the Sheriff's Office is listed with three staff (Sheriff, Undersheriff, one Deputy) and the site's navigation and staff directory contain no jail, detention or corrections department, page, or budget line of any kind
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Sheridan County profile · 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 Brandon Carver
- TitleSheridan County Sheriff
- Office address940 Eighth St., Hoxie, KS 67740
- Phone(785) 675-3481
- Fax785-675-2294
- Sworn staff (KSA profile)4
- Support staff (KSA profile)10
- Kansas Sheriffs' Association rolePresident (per KSA profile officer-position field)
- Sheriff's Office staff (county's own staff directory)Brandon Carver — Sheriff; Brian Diercks — Undersheriff; Bill Cousins — Deputy
- 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: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Sheridan 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 15th 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.
- 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's own site (sheridancountyks.gov) was opened this session — the home page and the staff directory. Neither mentions a jail, detention division, budget, roster, or any of the ten transparency items. This is a finding about the county's disclosure practices, not a research gap.
- Kansas repealed its only county-jail inspection statutes — K.S.A. 75-5228, effective April 11, 1996, and its companion K.S.A. 75-5227, effective July 1, 1996 — and nothing has replaced them; the Kansas Department of Corrections runs no county-jail inspection program.
- Board of County Commissioners: David Stithem, Kyle Emigh, Mike "Buck" Mader (per the county's own staff directory).
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Sheridan 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