Stark County, North Dakota — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center (Dickinson Adult Detention Center)

Operated bySouthwest Multi-County Correctional Center joint powers board (Administrator Michael Moseley)
Who runs itMichael Moseley — Administrator, Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center
Answers tothe Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center board
Why this is differentThe elected county sheriff does not run this jail.
Address66 Museum Drive, Dickinson, ND (co-located with the Stark County Sheriff's Office)
Rated capacity124 beds
Population on inspection date83 (Aug 27-28, 2025)
Grade1
Standards compliance107 compliant, 0 non-compliant, 1 not applicable
Governing countiesBillings, Bowman, Dunn, Golden Valley, Hettinger, Slope, and Stark; board chair Paul Clarys
What was triedstarkcountynd.gov (the main county site) refused every page fetched (robots.txt disallows crawling); no separate Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center website was located within the search budget

Source: Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center — DOCR inspection report (Aug 27-28, 2025) · checked 2026-08-25

Transparency rating

0/10Closed

✗The jail is named — not published
✗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 — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Stark County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-08-25. 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
Beds124 (Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center, shared facility — not solely Stark County's)

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Corey Lee

Runs the jailNo — the county's jail (Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center) is run by a joint-powers board Administrator, not the sheriff
ElectedNDCC 11-10-02 requires each county to have an elected sheriff, four-year term
Contact66 West Museum Drive, PO Box 130, Dickinson, ND 58601; 701-456-7610

Still needed

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

Source: Stark County Sheriff's Office — official site · 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

Not listed on the page opened

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 2026-08-25

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

Stark County does not run its own jail; the county's jail need is met by the Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center in Dickinson, which Stark co-governs with six other counties under a joint powers board (NDCC 12-44.1-02(1)(c)). The facility's Administrator, Michael Moseley, is the jailer — not the elected Stark County Sheriff.
starkcountynd.gov's robots.txt disallowed every page this session tried to fetch (homepage, /government, /departments, /sheriff, /departments/sheriff), so the ten transparency checks could not be evaluated against the county's own site. The Stark County Sheriff's Office runs a separate site, starkcountysheriffnd.com, which was readable but published no jail roster, budget, PREA, inspection, contract, bond, or fee information on the pages opened (about, services, home navigation).
Board of County Commissioners (NDCC 11-11-01). starkcountynd.gov robots.txt blocked every page fetched this session (homepage, /government, /departments, /sheriff, /departments/sheriff), so commissioner names, a board page, and a minutes page could not be confirmed from a source opened here.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Stark 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