The Detention Center
Not scored. The county's own website was not reachable in the session that produced this record, so its disclosures were never examined. This is a gap in the research, not a finding about the county.
- Operated byItasca County Sheriff's Office
- Address108 NE Fifth Street, Grand Rapids, MN 55744 (MN DOC inspection report)
- Approved capacity179 beds; operational capacity 170 (MN DOC inspection report)
- Population on inspection dayNot found in the 2025 DOC report
- Background — 2019 sunset orderPer the MN state research file (Star Tribune, 2019): Itasca County's jail received a DOC 'sunset order' with a summer 2021 deadline tied to new construction, alongside Lake of the Woods County. This is a 2019 news report; whether it still applies or was resolved by 2026 was NOT reverified in this county-level research.
Source: MN DOC Adult Facility Inspection Report — Itasca County, 2025 · checked 2026-09-18
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds179 approved / 170 operational (MN DOC inspection report, 2025)
Since then
- A 2019 Star Tribune report (cited in the MN state file) described a DOC 'sunset order' tied to new construction with a summer 2021 deadline for the Itasca County jail; not reverified here
The Sheriff
Sheriff Joe Dasovich
- Runs the jailYes — the elected sheriff, statewide pattern under Minn. Stat. 387.11 and 641.14
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Minn. Stat. 382.01), statewide pattern
- Source of nameCould not be confirmed on the county's own site — every page attempted on co.itasca.mn.us (homepage, Sheriff's Office page, staff directory, Residents page) failed to load in this research. Name is from the Minnesota DOC's April 2025 licensing inspection report.
- 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 — Itasca County, 2025 · 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.
Ninth 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 2026-09-18
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
- GENUINELY COULD NOT OPEN co.itasca.mn.us for this research. Every attempt failed: the homepage returned a 403 error on one try and a robots.txt fetch failure on another; the Sheriff's Office page (/223/Sheriffs-Office) failed twice with robots.txt errors; the county's Directory/staff pages (Directory.aspx, Directory.aspx?did=21, Directory.aspx?did=47) and the /31/Residents page all failed with robots.txt fetch timeouts. No sheriff's-office-domain alternative was found within the 7-search budget (already spent one search per county). Per instructions, audit.checks is left empty ({}) rather than scored 'no' across the board, because nobody actually examined what the county publishes.
- Not found — see audit notes; the county's own site could not be opened during this research.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Itasca 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