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

The Detention Center

Wabasha County Jail

Operated byWabasha County Sheriff's Office
Address848 17th St E. Ste #2, Wabasha, MN 55981, in the county's Criminal Justice Center
Jail administrator (staff title, not a separate county department)Brenda Balow — named as the jail's administering staff contact on the county's own jail page and as Jail Administrator in the MN DOC's 2025 inspection report; the county's own site does not describe detention as a separate department, so jail_administrator is recorded null per the sheriff-is-jailer default
CapacityMN DOC's 2025 inspection report lists an approved capacity of 43 secure coed beds (90% operational capacity, about 38.7 beds)
PREAThe county's own jail page states the facility maintains "a zero-tolerance standard for incidence of sexual assault and rape" and operates a PREA reporting hotline (1-651-565-8114) — no audit result is published, only the policy and hotline
Bail/bond"The jail accepts cash bail at the kiosk in the Criminal Justice Center lobby during business hours"; approved bail bond agents are pointed to via the State Court Administrator's Office at mncourts.gov
FeesWork release: "$175 for the first week," plus a "$20 booking fee" and a "$15 urinalysis test fee"; fingerprinting "$20 per card"
Also sourced toWabasha County Sheriff's Office — https://www.co.wabasha.mn.us/departments/sheriff_s_office/index.php
Also sourced toMN DOC Adult Facilities Inspection Report — Wabasha County Jail, April 29, 2025 — https://mn.gov/doc/assets/Wabasha%20County%202025_tcm1089-689477.pdf

Source: Wabasha County Jail · checked 2026-09-18

Transparency rating

3/10Closed

✓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
✓Phone, video and commissary rates

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Wabasha 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
Beds43 (secure, coed) per the MN DOC's 2025 inspection report; not independently stated on the county's own jail page

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Rodney L. Bartsh

Runs the jailYes — the elected sheriff has charge and custody of the county jail under Minn. Stat. 387.11 and is responsible for its operation and condition under Minn. Stat. 641.14 (MN state layer)
How the office is filledElected countywide to a four-year term under Minn. Stat. 382.01 (MN state layer); the county's own site states Sheriff Bartsh has held the office "since his 2002 election and is currently on his 5th term"
Title on county siteThe Sheriff's Office page describes the sheriff as "Chief Keeper of the Jail"
Confirmed twiceNamed "Rodney L. Bartsh" on the county's own Sheriff's Office page and "Rodney Bartsh" in the MN DOC's 2025 inspection report of the Wabasha County Jail

Still needed

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

Source: Wabasha 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.

Minnesota District Court (judicial district covering Wabasha County)

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

Wabasha County's own jail page names the facility, states its cash-bail kiosk procedure, and publishes work-release/booking/fingerprinting fee amounts, which are the basis for the 'named', 'bond_info' and 'fees' checks. It does not itself publish a roster, capacity figure, budget, PREA audit result, inspection result, or contract terms — only a general PREA policy statement, which does not rise to a published audit result.
A separate DocumentCenter jail-roster search result (https://co.wabasha.mn.us/inmates) was returned by the domain-scoped search but was not opened within this session's fetch budget, so 'roster' is recorded 'no' rather than assumed.
Not found — Wabasha County's own departments index page (departments/index.php) was refused twice by WebFetch ("URL is disallowed by robots.txt rules"). Minnesota counties are generally governed by an elected Board of County Commissioners.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Wabasha 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