The Detention Center
Wells County Court Holding (not a jail — no overnight stays permitted). A grade-four facility may not hold anyone overnight, so the ten disclosure checks are not applied to it.
- Operated byWells County Sheriff's Office
- Facility typeGrade 4 correctional facility — a court holding area / adult lockup where individuals may not be detained overnight, per the ND Correctional Facility Standards grading system
- Rated capacity4
- Inspection resultFound to comply with the North Dakota Correctional Facility Standards; no standards recorded as failed
- Inspection dateNovember 6, 2025
- Where Wells County's prisoners actually goPer the North Dakota state-layer research (drawn from the host facilities' own 2025-2026 DOCR inspection reports, not independently re-verified here): Lake Region Correctional Facility (Devils Lake), Heart of America Correctional & Treatment Center (Rugby), and Stutsman County Correctional Center (Jamestown)
- What was triedhttps://www.wellscountynd.gov/ was attempted directly (no search result located a Wells County domain) and could not be fetched
Source: DOCR inspection report — Wells County Court Holding, Fessenden (Nov 6, 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
- Beds4 (DOCR rated capacity of the court holding room)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Christopher Kluth
- Runs the jailNo jail to run — Wells County has only a grade 4 court holding facility with no overnight detention
- TermElected, four-year term (NDCC 11-10-02)
- County websiteNo Wells County government website was located or opened
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: DOCR inspection report — Wells County Court Holding, Fessenden (Nov 6, 2025) · 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 Wells 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
- Wells County has no jail — only a grade 4 court holding room with no overnight detention. This is not a gap: its prisoners go to Lake Region, Heart of America, and Stutsman County facilities per the state-layer research.
- 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.
- No Wells County government website was located via the search budget available to this research pass.
- 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). No Wells County commissioners page, agenda, or minutes URL was located or opened.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Wells 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