The Detention Center
Woodson Detention Center
- Operated byThe Woodson County Sheriff's Office (statutory default under K.S.A. 19-811 and 19-1903)
- Jail bed capacityNot found
- Male/female bed splitNot found
- Sworn staff countNot found
- Support staff countNot found
- Jail staff countNot found
- Out-of-county inmates housedNot found
- Annual budgetNot found
- What was tried (original session)Kansas Sheriffs' Association county profile page (https://www.kansassheriffs.org/county_map/county/992) was fetched twice this session and contains only the sheriff's name, title, office address, phone, fax and the text 'www.woodsonsheriff.com' — no staffing, capacity, budget, or facility-name figures. A WebSearch restricted to woodsoncounty.net domain returned ten indexed URLs, including http://woodsoncounty.net/main/emergency-services/sheriff and http://woodsoncounty.net/main/component/content/?id=47&Itemid=259; every one fetched (the sheriff page, the id=47 general page, and the district-court fee-schedule page) returned an HTTP 404. The bare root http://woodsoncounty.net/ could not be fetched at all (provenance timeout, since it had not itself appeared in a search result or a followed link). woodsonsheriff.com was attempted and refused for the same provenance reason. The county's own web presence is effectively unreachable in this session; this is a research gap, not a finding that the county fails to publish.
- Retry session (2026-09-17) — woodsoncounty.net still dead, but woodsonsheriff.com openedA fresh WebSearch (allowed_domains: woodsoncounty.net) again returned only pages (Sheriff, general, treasurer, elections) that WebFetch could not use — this time the search itself did not surface the sheriff/id=47 pages tried previously, so the county's primary domain was not directly retested for content, though it is documented elsewhere in this session as still failing on prior attempts. Separately, a fresh WebSearch (allowed_domains: woodsonsheriff.com) for "jail roster inmate" returned real, live indexed pages this time: the roster (roster.php), a roster chooser (roster-choose), a jail-information page (page.php?id=7), individual inmate-view pages, and the site root. All were genuinely fetchable this session.
- Confirmed on the Sheriff's Office's own site (woodsonsheriff.com)The site names the facility "Woodson Detention Center" (per the roster-choose page) and publishes a live, searchable inmate roster — https://www.woodsonsheriff.com/roster.php?orderby=1 listed 13 current inmates (as of September 16-17, 2026) with names, booking numbers, booking dates (June 2025 through September 16, 2026), charges, and individual bond amounts ranging from $0 to $275,000. No general bail-posting instructions, capacity figures, or budget accompany the roster.
- Address105 West Rutledge Street, Yates Center, KS 66783 (per the site's contact info)
- Fees page checkedhttps://www.woodsonsheriff.com/pay-fees is a portal for paying traffic citations issued in Woodson County online (plus a credit-card convenience fee); it does not enumerate jail phone/commissary/visitation fees or bond-posting fees.
- Capacity / budget / PREA / inspections / contracts / bond infoNot published on the pages of woodsonsheriff.com reviewed this session
Source: Woodson County, Kansas Sheriff's Office — Inmate Roster · checked 2026-09-17
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓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 — 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 Jacob Morrison
- Exact titleWoodson County Sheriff
- Office address105 West Rutledge, Yates Center, KS 66783
- Office phone620-625-8640
- Office fax620-625-8672
- Sheriff's office website — opened in retry session (2026-09-17)www.woodsonsheriff.com — a fresh domain-scoped WebSearch this retry session returned indexed pages (roster, roster-choose, page.php?id=7, pay-fees, and the site root), which were then fetched successfully; see jail.facts below
- Runs the jailYes — Kansas's default rule applies here (K.S.A. 19-811, 19-1903): the elected sheriff has charge and custody of the jail
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Kansas Sheriffs' Association — Woodson 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). Which method the 31st Judicial District uses, and who sets bail specifically in Woodson County, is not established in this record. The 31st 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.
31st Judicial District — District Court (Allen, Neosho, Wilson, Woodson counties)
- Hon. Daniel D. Creitz (Chief Judge)
Still needed
- 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
- Retry pass (2026-09-17): genuinely examined this session. The county's primary domain (woodsoncounty.net) remained unreachable, but the separate Sheriff's Office domain, woodsonsheriff.com (a first-party county source), opened successfully at several pages this session. It names the jail ("Woodson Detention Center") and runs a live, searchable inmate roster showing 13 current inmates with names, booking dates, charges, and individual bond amounts — real, positive findings for `named` and `roster`.
- The roster's per-inmate bond figures are individual case amounts, not general guidance on how to post bond (accepted payment methods, hours, process), so `bond_info` is scored 'no' rather than 'yes', consistent with the convention used elsewhere in this project (e.g. Rawlins and Rooks counties). The site's fee page (pay-fees) covers only traffic-ticket payments, not jail phone/commissary/visitation fees, so `fees` is scored 'no'. Capacity, budget, PREA, inspection results, deaths in custody, and inter-agency contracts were checked for and not found on the pages examined.
- State-layer finding applies: K.S.A. 75-5228, the 1973 jail inspection statute, was repealed effective April 11, 1996 (L. 1996, ch. 136, sec. 1); its companion 75-5227 was repealed effective July 1, 1996 (L. 1996, ch. 55, sec. 1). Nothing replaced either statute, and the Kansas Department of Corrections runs no county-jail inspection program.
- Woodson County is governed by a Board of County Commissioners. Not otherwise researched this session — the county's website could not be opened (see jail.facts, 'What was tried').
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Woodson 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