Isanti County, Minnesota — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Isanti County Jail and Work Release

Operated byIsanti County Sheriff's Office
Address509 18th Avenue SW, Cambridge, MN 55008 (MN DOC inspection report)
Capacity (county's own site)"The new addition has the potential to house 112 prisoners" (former facility held 39) — county Jail page
Licensed/approved capacity (DOC)111 beds, Secure Coed
VisitingMonitor-based visits, 20 minutes; Wed 10am-4pm, Fri 10am-1:30pm, Sat 1pm-8:30pm; picture ID required — county Jail page
Population on inspection dayNot found in the 2026 DOC report

Source: Isanti County — Jail page · checked 2026-09-18

Transparency rating

3/10Closed

✓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 Isanti County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-18. 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
Beds111 approved (MN DOC inspection report, 2026); county site describes a 112-bed addition replacing a 39-bed former facility

Since then

An addition was built giving the facility "the potential to house 112 prisoners," up from 39 in the former facility — county Jail page; year of that expansion not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Wayne Seiberlich

Runs the jailYes — the elected sheriff; the county's own Sheriff's Office Administration page states the office's "annual budget of over 5 million dollars", implying the office (which includes the jail) runs under the sheriff
How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Minn. Stat. 382.01), statewide pattern
Source of nameNot confirmed by name on the county pages successfully opened (Jail page, Administration page); the About-Us page repeatedly failed to load. Name is from the Minnesota DOC's March 2026 licensing inspection report.

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: MN DOC Adult Facility Inspection Report — Isanti County Jail, 2026 · checked 2026-09-18

The Judges

Minnesota district judges are elected on a nonpartisan ballot to six-year terms, but most first reach the bench by gubernatorial appointment to a mid-term vacancy. Bail at first appearance is set by the court under Minn. R. Crim. P. 6.02.

Tenth Judicial District — District Court

Not found

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 2026-09-18

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

The Sheriff's Office Administration page states "The Sheriff's annual budget of over 5 million dollars," but this is the whole Sheriff's Office budget, not a broken-out jail/detention line item, so 'budget' is recorded 'no'.
The live custody roster at sheriff.co.isanti.mn.us/letg/custody.html, fetched during this research, showed about 31 people in custody with names, charges, and status — a genuine public roster on the sheriff's own subdomain.
Board of County Commissioners — not confirmed; the county's About-Us and Administration pages loaded only partially and did not name board members, and repeated attempts to reload them failed with robots.txt timeouts.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Isanti 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 2026-09-18 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered