The Detention Center
Yellow Medicine County Jail
- Operated byYellow Medicine County Sheriff's Office ("YMC Sheriff's Department")
- Day-to-day jail administrator named in 2024 DOC reportKathy Busack — an internal role under the elected sheriff, not a separate county department, so jail_administrator is recorded as null
- Approved capacity36 beds, per the July 31, 2024 MN DOC inspection report
- Live custody roster confirmed on the county's own subdomainAs of September 17, 2026, 8:21 p.m., the county's own custody page listed individuals currently in custody with MNI number, name, sex, age, booking number, intake date/time, charges with statutory codes, hold status (including categories such as "Hold for Court," "Warrant," "Sentenced," "Chippewa Boarder," "ROR'd," and "Temporary Release"), and a bail/bond amount column (most entries showing $0.00)
- Evidence of holding another county's prisonersOne hold-status category on the live roster was "Chippewa Boarder," indicating the jail holds at least some individuals from Chippewa County, but no contract terms or per-diem rate were published on the pages read, so the contracts check below is recorded as "no"
- Also sourced toYellow Medicine County, MN — live custody roster — https://www2.co.ym.mn.gov/awlcustody/custody.html
- Also sourced toYellow Medicine County, MN — Departments — https://www.co.ym.mn.gov/departments
Source: MN DOC — Yellow Medicine County Jail Facility Inspection Report (2024 inspection) · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds36 (approved capacity, per 2024 DOC inspection report)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Bill Flaten
- Runs the jailYes — the elected sheriff, per Minn. Stat. 387.11 and 641.14
- How the office is filledElected to a four-year term (Minn. Stat. 382.01)
- Source of nameNamed as sheriff in the MN DOC's inspection report for the facility's July 31, 2024 inspection; Yellow Medicine County's own site pages that loaded (departments list, live custody roster) refer to the "YMC Sheriff's Department" but did not themselves name the sheriff
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: MN DOC — Yellow Medicine County Jail Facility Inspection Report, issued for the July 31, 2024 inspection · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Minnesota district judges run in nonpartisan elections to six-year terms, but a large share first reach the bench by gubernatorial appointment to a mid-term vacancy rather than a contested race (river_states.json, MN, judges_elected). Bail at first appearance is set by "the court" under Minn. R. Crim. P. 6.02.
Eighth Judicial District (covers Yellow Medicine County)
- Not found — confirmed only that Yellow Medicine County sits in the Eighth Judicial District; named judges could not be retrieved from the Judicial Branch's JavaScript-driven directory within the search budget
- 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 live custody roster at https://www2.co.ym.mn.gov/awlcustody/custody.html shows a bail/bond dollar amount per individual in custody, but this is case-by-case data, not published guidance on how to post bail, so `bond_info` is recorded as "no."
- A page titled "YMC Jail Information" was found via search (co.ym.mn.gov/index.asp?...) but WebFetch could not open it — it was refused as disallowed by the site's robots rules — so nothing from it is cited here.
- A separate page found via search, https://www2.co.ym.mn.gov/awlcustody/ActiveWarrantListing.htm, actually returned Crow Wing County warrant data rather than Yellow Medicine County content when fetched, suggesting a shared multi-county vendor platform (the page referenced a "NIGHTCAP" case-management system); it is not used as a Yellow Medicine County source here.
- The DOC's 2024 report records specific counted discrepancies (a sharps count and a missing week of lock inspections) and a missing linen-exchange posting; per the brief's instruction these are quoted as standards recorded as not met rather than characterized as violations.
- Yellow Medicine County is governed by a Board of County Commissioners, the standard Minnesota county-board structure that funds the jail under Minn. Stat. 641.01 while the elected sheriff runs it day to day. The county's Departments page (co.ym.mn.gov/departments) lists Finance & Administration, Attorney, Property & Public Services, Sheriff's Office and other departments but was not shown to include a distinct Commissioners/County Board page or agenda/minutes link in the content read.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Yellow Medicine 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