The Detention Center
Burleigh Morton Detention Center (BMDC)
- Operated byBurleigh County Sheriff's Office, under the joint Burleigh and Morton County Commission governing authority (two-county facility; Morton County co-owns it but hosts nothing itself)
- Detention commandTrent Wangen — Assistant Jail Administrator, Burleigh Morton Detention Center
- Rated capacity555 (DOCR inspection, Feb 3-4, 2026)
- Population on inspection day360
- GradeGrade one — up to a one-year hold
- Compliance"107 Compliant, 0 Non-Compliant, 1 Non-Applicable" — no standard recorded as failed
- 2026 county budget line"County Detention Center": $13,599,409; "County Sheriff": $9,693,403 — Burleigh County 2026 Final Budget
- Counties/agencies sending inmates (per the inspection report)Emmons, Grant, Kidder, Logan, McIntosh, Mercer, Sheridan, Sioux, Dickey, Traill, Griggs, Adams, LaMoure and Cass counties, plus the cities of Bismarck, Mandan and Lincoln, and federal partners (U.S. Marshals Service, Bureau of Prisons, ICE, DOCR Parole and Probation)
- Commission discussionSheriff Leben presents a quarterly jail/operations report to the county commission (e.g. minutes of Apr 20, 2026 and Jul 20, 2026)
Source: Burleigh Morton Detention Center — DOCR Inspection Report (Feb 3-4, 2026) · checked 2026-08-25
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✓PREA audits
- ✗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
- Beds555 (DOCR rated capacity, Feb 2026 inspection)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Kelly Leben
- Runs the jailYes — statutory keeper of the Burleigh Morton Detention Center under NDCC 11-15-03(1)(f); named on the county's own detention center page as the contact
- ElectedYes — NDCC 11-10-02, four-year term
- Detention center contact(701) 255-3113
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Burleigh Morton Detention Center — DOCR Inspection Report (Feb 3-4, 2026) · 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 — South Central Judicial District
- Cynthia M. Feland (Presiding)
- Daniel J. Borgen
- James S. Hill
- Jason Hammes
- Jackson J. Lofgren
- Pamela A. Nesvig
- Lindsey Nieuwsma
- Marina Spahr
- Bonnie L. Storbakken
- Bobbi Weiler
- 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 →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The detention center's own inmate-search link on burleigh.gov points to JailTracker, a commercial vendor platform — treated as a third-party aggregator under this project's rules, so 'roster' is recorded as no even though the county links to it.
- The Burleigh-Morton page names a phone vendor (Reliance) and a commissary/deposit vendor (inmatecanteen.com) but does not itself publish specific per-minute or commissary rates, so 'fees' is recorded as no.
- 'inspections' is recorded no because the DOCR inspection report is state publishing, not reposted on burleigh.gov.
- The 2026 Final Budget (burleigh.gov) itemizes 'County Detention Center' at $13,599,409 and 'County Sheriff' at $9,693,403 — opened and confirmed directly.
- North Dakota Monitor reported (Dec 18, 2025) that DOCR agreed to pay BMDC $105/day for 120 guaranteed beds (~$4.6M/yr) to relieve state prison crowding; this was not independently reopened this session (WebFetch returned PROVENANCE_REQUIRED) and is carried from ND state-layer research (plains_states.json), not from a county source, so it does not count toward any transparency check.
- 5-member Board of County Commissioners (NDCC 11-11-01): Brian Bitner (Chair), Steve Bakken (Vice Chair), Wayne Munson, Steve Schwab, Jerry Woodcox.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Burleigh 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