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

The Detention Center

Rice County Jail

Operated byRice County Sheriff's Office
LocationRice County Public Safety Center, 50 East View Drive, Faribault, MN
Fee published — "Pay for Stay"$20.00/day per-diem inmate stay fee; $10.00 booking fee; medical costs incurred while in custody billed to the inmate; unpaid balances sent to collections
Licensed capacity (state DOC report)76 beds approved capacity; 68 beds operational (90%), Local Adult Detention Facility class
What was triedThe county's own Jail page (ricecountymn.gov/279/Rice-County-Jail) and its Weekly Jail Roster PDF returned repeated 429 errors on every attempt and could not be opened; Sheriff's Office, Sheriff-FAQs and the Pay-for-Stay FAQ pages did load

Source: Rice County — Pay for Stay FAQ · checked 2026-09-18

Transparency rating

1/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Rice 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
Beds76 approved / 68 operational (per state DOC report, not published by the county itself)

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Jesse Thomas

Runs the jailYes — elected sheriff, Minn. Stat. 387.11 and 641.14
How the office is filledElected, four-year term (Minn. Stat. 382.01)

Still needed

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

Source: Rice County Sheriff's Office · 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.

Third Judicial District — District Court

Chief Judge Christine A. Long

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

Roster judged 'no' despite a 'Weekly Jail Roster PDF' title appearing in search results, because every attempt to open the county's own Jail page or that document returned a 429 error and could not actually be examined; recording it as 'yes' would cite a URL never opened.
Fees judged 'no' for the transparency check because the published 'Pay for Stay' amounts are cost-recovery per-diem/booking/medical charges, not the phone/video-visit/commissary rate schedule the check asks about.
Board of County Commissioners governs the county under Minn. Stat. 641.01; day-to-day jail charge belongs to the elected sheriff. A 2019 Star Tribune report (cited in the Minnesota state layer) noted the Rice County Jail was downgraded by DOC to a 90-day lockup effective 11/1/2019 pending a county board decision on a new facility; whether that has since been resolved was not reverified here.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Rice 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