The Detention Center
Chase County Jail
- Operated byChase County Sheriff's Office
- Address921 Broadway, Imperial, NE 69033 (courthouse lower floor)
- RosterThe jail's own page publishes a current-inmate list by name (e.g. "Rodolfo Flores, Brian Foster, Jesus Acuna" at time of fetch), with a disclaimer that charges/bond amounts may change without the roster being updated
- Communication servicesPage describes phone, video visitation (on-site and online via a CIDNET platform), email and text services for inmates; visitation is Mon-Fri 1-3pm on-site and scheduled windows online; no specific fee schedule is published on this page
- Capacity, fees, bond info, inspections, PREA, deaths, contractsNot published on the pages reviewed
Source: Chase County Sheriff's Office — Chase County Jail · checked 2026-08-25
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Not found
- Runs the jailYes, per Neb. Rev. Stat. 47-105 and 23-1703 (no county board of corrections identified for Chase County); the sheriff's office homepage itself states "The sheriff has charge and custody of the jail and its prisoners, except in counties where a county board of corrections exists"
- Office921 Broadway, Imperial, NE 69033 (lower floor of the courthouse)
- Contact(308) 882-4748; dispatcher/jailer available 24/7/365
- Officeholder nameNot found — neither chasecounty.nebraska.gov nor the Chase County Sheriff's Office site (chasecountysheriff.org) names the sitting sheriff on any page opened this session
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Chase County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-25
The Judges
Nebraska uses merit selection with retention elections for every trial court judge, including the county court judge who sets bail at first appearance. The Governor appoints from a list submitted by a judicial nominating commission (Neb. Const. Art. V, sec. 21); an appointed judge later faces an uncontested retention vote. District Court (general jurisdiction) and County Court (bail at first appearance, misdemeanors, probate, most juvenile matters) are both state courts, not county offices. No sitting judge's name for this county was found on a source opened this session, so judges are recorded as Not found rather than guessed.
District Court
- Not found
County Court
- 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
- The Chase County Sheriff's Office operates its own domain (chasecountysheriff.org), reached via the "Sheriff's Office" link on the county government's own site (chasecounty.nebraska.gov); it is treated here as the county's own publication, not a third-party aggregator.
- The jail page publishes a live-looking inmate roster by name and describes phone/video visitation services (including a fee-based CIDNET online-visitation platform), but no specific fee amounts, capacity figure, bond guidance, inspection result, PREA information, death record, or inter-agency contract was found on chasecounty.nebraska.gov or chasecountysheriff.org.
- No budget document or sheriff/jail budget line was found on chasecounty.nebraska.gov/services, the only budget-adjacent page located this session.
- Neb. Rev. Stat. 83-4,131 requires Nebraska Crime Commission personnel to inspect the facility and deliver a written report within 30 days to the facility's governing body (the county board), not to the public. No state agency publishes these reports, and the county's own site does not publish one either, so this is recorded as not published rather than as a violation.
- Chase County's own site labels its governing body the "Board of Commissioners." Three members are listed by district: Billie Muehlenkamp (District 1), Jacci Brown (District 2), Kurt Bernhardt (District 3). Meetings are held the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month. Chase County is not on the 2008 Blue Book's 27-county supervisor list, and the county's own site confirms commissioner form.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Chase 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