The Detention Center
Ward County Detention Center
- Operated byWard County Sheriff's Office
- Detention commandPaul Olthoff — Jail Administrator
- Rated capacity286
- Population on inspection day152 (March 25-26, 2026)
- GradeGrade 1 — holds inmates up to one year
- ComplianceAll 107 applicable standards found in compliance; standards 026 and 038 initially required corrective action plans, later accepted
- Order of noncomplianceA DOCR order of noncompliance is posted for Ward County (https://www.docr.nd.gov/sites/default/files/documents/jails/Ward%20County%20Order%20of%20Noncompliance.pdf) but the posted PDF contains no machine-readable text and could not be read
- What was triedhttps://www.co.ward.nd.us/221/Ward-County-Detention-Center and https://www.co.ward.nd.us/Directory.aspx?did=19 both failed to load (robots.txt fetch timeout) on repeated attempts
Source: DOCR inspection report — Ward County Detention Center, Minot (Mar 25-26, 2026) · 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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds286 (DOCR rated capacity)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Robert Roed
- Runs the jailYes — Ward County Sheriff's Office; NDCC 11-15-03(1)(f)
- TermElected, four-year term (NDCC 11-10-02)
- County websiteco.ward.nd.us/208/Sheriffs-Office; page loaded but contained no jail-specific, roster, budget, PREA, inspection, bond, or fee content
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: DOCR inspection report — Ward County Detention Center, Minot (Mar 25-26, 2026) · checked 2026-08-25
The Judges
North Dakota district judges are elected on a nonpartisan ballot to six-year terms; a midterm vacancy is filled by the governor from a judicial nominating committee's list, or by special election (ND Constitution Art. VI §13). A presiding judge may instead appoint a magistrate to hold initial appearance and set bail under N.D. Sup. Ct. Admin. R. 20. Which of North Dakota's eight judicial districts covers Ward County, and the names of its sitting judges, were not established from a source read here.
District Court (specific judicial district and judges not established from a source read here)
- Not found
- 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
- A page titled 'Ward County Detention Center | Ward County, ND - Official Website' (co.ward.nd.us/221/Ward-County-Detention-Center) exists per a search-result title, but every attempt to open and read it failed with a robots.txt fetch timeout, so it is not used as a source here and every check above is marked 'no' rather than guessed.
- The DOCR inspection report is the state publishing the facility's information, not the county — per the group brief, that does not make the 'inspections' check a yes.
- North Dakota has no statute requiring a jail to report a death in custody to a state agency; the state's federal Death in Custody Reporting Act plan says so directly.
- Board of County Commissioners, 3 to 5 members, under NDCC 11-11-01 and 11-11-02; the board's jail power is NDCC 11-11-14(29). Ward County's own commissioners/agenda page was not successfully opened (repeated robots.txt fetch timeouts on co.ward.nd.us subpages beyond the homepage and the Sheriff's Office page).
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Ward 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