The Detention Center
Bowman County Court Holding (grade four — no overnight stays). A grade-four facility may not hold anyone overnight, so the ten disclosure checks are not applied to it.
- Operated byBowman County Sheriff's Office
- Address104 1st Street NW, Suite 9, Bowman, ND 58623
- Rated capacity"one (1)"
- Grade"grade four (4) correctional facility"
- Inspection dateAugust 26, 2025
- Compliance status"the Bowman County Court Holding was determined to comply with the North Dakota Correctional Facility Standards"
- Where Bowman County's prisoners are actually heldSouthwest Multi-County Correctional Center (Dickinson, Stark County) — confirmed directly: that facility's own DOCR inspection report lists Bowman among "the counties of Adams, McKenzie, Billings, Bowman, Dunn, Golden Valley, Hettinger, Slope and Stark"
Source: Bowman County Court Holding — DOCR Inspection Report (Aug 26, 2025) · checked 2026-08-25
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds1 (grade four court holding — no overnight stays permitted)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Frank T. Eberle
- Runs the jailNo county jail — Bowman County operates only a grade four court holding facility with no overnight stays
- ElectedYes — NDCC 11-10-02, four-year term
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: North Dakota Court System — Bowman County court location page · checked 2026-08-25
The Judges
North Dakota district judges are elected on a nonpartisan ballot to six-year terms (ND Constitution Art. VI, Sec. 1). Midterm vacancies are filled by the Governor from a list submitted by a judicial nominating committee, unless the Governor instead calls a special election (ND Constitution Art. VI, Sec. 13). District judges are state judicial officers, not county officials. Under ND Supreme Court Administrative Rule 20, a presiding judge may appoint a magistrate with delegated authority to hold initial appearances and set bail under NDCC ch. 29-08.
District Court — Southwest Judicial District
- William A. Herauf (Presiding Judge)
- Rhonda R. Ehlis
- James D. Gion
- Dann E. Greenwood
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-25
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
- Bowman County has no operating adult jail — only a grade four court holding cell rated for one person, which passed its Aug 26, 2025 DOCR inspection.
- Bowman County co-governs the Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center in Dickinson (Stark County) via a seven-county joint powers board; the county's own government site (bowmannd.com) does not appear to name this arrangement in the pages reached this session, but the host facility's own DOCR inspection report lists Bowman among its served counties.
- bowmannd.com combines city-of-Bowman and Bowman-County content; a distinct sheriff or jail page on this domain was not located within this session's search budget.
- 5-member Board of County Commissioners (NDCC 11-11-01): Rick Braaten (Chairman), Pine Abrahamson, Josh Buchmann, Jerid Janikowski, Nathan Miller. Regular meetings generally 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month, 9:00am, courthouse lower level.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Bowman 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 2026-08-25 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered