The Detention Center
Stutsman County Correctional Center (SCCC)
- Operated byStutsman County (Sheriff Chad Kaiser / Jail Administrator Chad Jackson)
- Detention commandChad Jackson — Jail Administrator
- Address205 6th Street SE, Jamestown, ND (2nd floor of the Law Enforcement Center)
- Opened1986, originally 44-bed capacity
- Rated capacity92 (Grade 1)
- Population on inspection date64 (June 11, 2026)
- Standards compliance107 compliant, 0 non-compliant
- Counties/entities under contractKidder, Eddy, Emmons, Foster, Griggs, LaMoure, McIntosh, Wells, Logan, Sargent, Mercer, Dickey, Barnes, Ransom, Pembina, and Cass counties; U.S. Border Patrol; Federal Bureau of Prisons; U.S. Marshals Service; ND DOCR Parole and Probation
- Sheriff department budget (2026)$2,259,725 (Dept. 116)
- Correctional Center budget (2026)$1,507,003 (Dept. 144)
Source: Stutsman County Correctional Center — DOCR inspection report (June 11, 2026) · checked 2026-08-25
Transparency rating
6/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓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
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1986
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds92 (expanded from an original 44-bed capacity; expansion year not specified)
Since then
- Expanded from 44 beds to 92 beds — year of expansion not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Chad Kaiser
- Runs the jailYes — the Stutsman County Correctional Center, day-to-day operations delegated to a jail administrator
- ElectedFirst elected November 2010; NDCC 11-10-02 sets four-year terms
- Staffing10 full-time deputies and 2 full-time office deputies; office averages roughly 7,000 calls for service a year covering 2,298 square miles, the second-largest county in North Dakota
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Stutsman County, ND — Sheriff's Office · 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 — Southeast Judicial District
- Not listed on the page opened
- 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
- Stutsman County publishes a genuinely substantial jail transparency page: a live inmate roster with photos and bond amounts, a bail/bond-posting page (cash kiosk, bail bonds, credit/debit card, all 24/7), and PREA audit reports going back to 2016 (2016, 2019, 2022, 2025).
- The correctional center page names a boarding contract with the U.S. Marshals Service and lists many sending counties, but no per-diem rate is published anywhere found this session, so 'contracts' is recorded 'no' (the check asks for contracts 'with rates').
- No phone, video-visit, or commissary fee schedule was found on the county's own site (an inmate canteen link goes to a third-party site, team3.inmatecanteen.com, not the county's own domain), so 'fees' is recorded 'no'.
- The county's own site does not link or reproduce the DOCR inspection report, so 'inspections' is recorded 'no' even though DOCR's state-published report (cited under state_inspection) is thorough.
- No death-in-custody information is published on the county's own site, so 'deaths' is recorded 'no'.
- Five commissioners elected at large (the county's own site states this explicitly, which differs from the district-election method used in most ND counties under NDCC 11-11-02). Current board: Levi Taylor (Chairman), Chad Wolsky (Vice Chairman), Amanda Hastings, Ben Tompkins, Mike Hansen. Meets 1st and 3rd Tuesday monthly.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Stutsman 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