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 byLe Sueur County Sheriff's Office
- Jail Administrator (title under the sheriff, per DOC letter)Jeremy Swenson
- What was triedLe Sueur County's own site (co.le-sueur.mn.us, in both www and non-www form, and its /330/Jail and /306/Sheriffs-Office pages) returned repeated 'robots.txt fetch failed: ConnectTimeout' errors across multiple attempts and could not be opened
Source: MN DOC corrective action response letter (Le Sueur County, 05/13/2025) · 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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Brett Mason
- Runs the jailYes — per Minn. Stat. 387.11/641.14 (MN state layer); named as sheriff in the MN DOC corrective action letter
- How the office is filledElected countywide under Minn. Stat. 382.01 (MN state layer) — statewide fact; not independently confirmed via the county's own site, which could not be opened
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: MN DOC corrective action response letter (Le Sueur County, 05/13/2025) · 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.
Minnesota District Court (judicial district covering Le Sueur County)
- 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
- Le Sueur County's own website (co.le-sueur.mn.us) could not be opened: every attempt, on both www and non-www hosts and on multiple pages, returned a robots.txt fetch failure (ConnectTimeout). Per instructions, audit.checks is left as an empty object rather than recorded as ten 'no' answers.
- Le Sueur County Board of Commissioners — not confirmed; the county's own site could not be opened
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Le Sueur 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