The Detention Center
No jail operated (not listed among county departments)
- Operated byNot applicable
- County department listAmbulance, Attorney, Clerk & Recorder, Clerk of District Court, Coroner, County Health Department, Department of Revenue, Disaster & Emergency Services, Election Administration, Justice of the Peace, Motor Vehicle, Road Department, Sanitarian, Senior Citizens Program, Superintendent of Public Schools, Treasurer — no Jail or Detention department
- Sheriff's Office pageDescribes patrol, court security, civil service, and search & rescue; does not mention operating a jail
- What was triedhttps://prairiecounty.org/county_departments, https://prairiecounty.org/sheriff — no jail/detention content found
Source: Prairie County - County Departments · checked 2026-08-24
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 Keifer Lewis
- Also serves asCoroner and Assessor (combined elected offices)
- UndersheriffJonathan Arnold
- TermElected, expires 2026
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Prairie County - Elected Officials · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
Montana district court judges and justices of the peace are state/county judicial officers elected independently of the sheriff and commissioners, not administrative county employees. The Justice of the Peace typically sets bail at first appearance.
7th Judicial District Court — Judges (Dawson, McCone, Prairie, Richland & Wibaux Counties)
- Hon. Scott Herring
- Hon. Olivia Rieger
Justice of the Peace / City Judge
- Mary Bucher (2026)
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-24
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 →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Prairie County does not appear to operate a jail: it is absent from the county's own list of departments, and the Sheriff's Office page (which lists patrol, court security, civil service and search & rescue) makes no mention of a detention facility. Could not confirm from county sources where its prisoners are held if arrested; recorded as a genuine gap rather than assumed.
- The county's own commissioners page states Prairie County publishes its financial information through the state's Montana Local Government Services Bureau website rather than on prairiecounty.org itself; per the brief's rule that a state platform does not count as the county publishing, this does not satisfy the 'budget' check.
- Board of Commissioners: Christine Keltner (District 1, term expires 2026), Dennis Teske (District 2, expires 2028), Todd Devlin (District 3, expires 2030). Three officials elected county-wide to staggered six-year terms; meets three times a month.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Prairie 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 2026-08-24 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered