Wyandotte County

The Detention Center

Adult Detention Center

• Operated byThe Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office (elected Sheriff Daniel Soptic), run day-to-day through a Detention Division under warden David Thaxton, even though Wyandotte County is otherwise governed by the consolidated Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas
• Address710 N. 7th Street, Kansas City, Kansas 66101
• Jail bed capacity (2024/2025 procurement document)584 beds
• Jail bed capacity (2019 procurement document, for comparison)468 beds (351 maximum security)
• Average daily population2021: 305–446; 2022: 389–468; 2023: 435–475; 2024 (through June): 416–480 — typically run around 80% of capacity
• Average length of stay14–24 days across the years reported (2018 figure); 14–19 days (2021–2024 figures)
• On-site servicesFull kitchen (meals served 365 days a year, three times daily); 24-hour medical clinic with mental health services available during business hours
• Sworn/support/jail staff countsNot found
• Out-of-county inmates housed / inter-agency contracts with ratesNot found — the procurement documents found are for commissary, laundry and food-service vendors, not for housing other agencies' prisoners
• Annual budgetNot found — the Unified Government publishes a Budget Division page listing archived annual budgets by year (2016–2025) and a Budget Fact Sheets page, but neither page's text as fetched contained an accessible link URL or an actual Sheriff's Office/detention dollar figure
• What was triedFetched directly on the wycokck.org domain: the Sheriff's Office page, the Divisions page, the Inmate Services page, the Inmate Search page, and two Department of Procurement RFP PDFs (R29191, Inmate Commissary & Laundry Services, 2019; R41156, Inmate Laundry and Food Services, 2024/2025). The Bookings & Releases disclaimer page returned HTTP 403. The Budget and Budget/Fact-Sheets pages loaded but their linked document URLs were not extractable from the fetched text, so no dollar figures could be confirmed.

Source: Unified Government of Wyandotte County/KCK — Department of Procurement, RFP R41156 (Inmate Laundry and Food Services) · checked 2026-09-17

• ✓The jail is named
• ✓Who is in custody
• ✓Beds and daily population
• ✗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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Wyandotte County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-17. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

• Year builtNot found
• Original costNot found
• Paid for byNot found
• Beds584 (per the 2024/2025 R41156 procurement document); an earlier 2019 procurement document (R29191) gave 468

The Sheriff

Sheriff Daniel Soptic

• Exact titleWyandotte County Sheriff
• Office address710 North 7th, Kansas City, KS 66101
• Office phone913-573-2865
• Office fax913-573-2972
• Sworn inDecember 23, 2021, per the Sheriff's Office's own site
• Government structure — read this before assumingWyandotte County is a consolidated city-county — the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, formed April 1, 1997. Unlike Colorado's Denver (appointed sheriff) or Broomfield (no sheriff), or Kansas's own Riley County (no sheriff at all — abolished 1974, replaced by an appointed Riley County Police Director), Wyandotte's consolidation did NOT eliminate or appoint-ify the sheriff. The Sheriff remains a separately elected county office, distinct from the Unified Government Police Department.
• Who runs the jailThe Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office — not the Unified Government Police Department — 'is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the county jail and providing charge and custody of the Adult and Juvenile Detention facilities.' The Sheriff's Office organizational structure includes an Adult Detention Center run through a Detention Division under an appointed warden, David Thaxton (in the role since 2022), operating under the elected Sheriff.

Source: Unified Government of Wyandotte County/KCK — 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). Wyandotte County is urban, not rural, and no district-specific source establishing who sets bail at first appearance here was found this session. The 29th 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.

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