Colfax County, Nebraska — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Colfax County Jail

Operated byColfax County Sheriff's Office
Detention commandAlyssa Ledon — Jail Administrator (Corporal, Colfax County Sheriff's Office)
Address411 E 11th Street, Schuyler, NE 68661, 4th Floor
On-site capacityA 6-person holding cell only; "inmates are not housed in the holding cell outside of business hours"
Where prisoners are actually heldColfax County contracts with, and houses inmates at, the Butler County, Platte County and Antelope County detention centers rather than operating its own full-time jail
Roster, fees, bond info, PREA, inspections, deathsNot published on the pages reviewed — the page states these must be obtained from whichever contracted detention center is actually holding a given inmate

Source: Colfax County government — Colfax County Jail · checked 2026-08-25

Transparency rating

3/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✓Beds and daily population
✗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
✗How to post bond — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Colfax 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
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Shawn Messerlie

Runs the jailYes, per statute — the sheriff's office page states "the sheriff has charge and custody of the jail and its prisoners, except in counties where a county board of corrections exists"
Office411 E 11th Street, Schuyler, NE 68661 (4th Floor)
Contact(402) 352-8526; smesserlie@colfaxne.com
Chief DeputyDaniel Freed

Still needed

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

Source: Colfax 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

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 →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Colfax County does not operate a full detention facility: its own site describes only a 6-person holding cell not used overnight, and names Butler, Platte and Antelope County detention centers as the facilities that actually house Colfax County's prisoners under contract. This is recorded as "where prisoners go" rather than as a gap.
"capacity" is marked yes narrowly because the county's own site does publish the one capacity figure that exists (the 6-person holding cell); no bed count for the contracted out-of-county housing is published by Colfax County itself.
The Budgets page (colfaxcountyne.gov/budgets/) lists Sheriff Office and Colfax County Jail as departments but shows no itemized dollar figures for either in the content fetched, so "budget" is recorded no.
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.
Colfax County's own site labels its governing body the "Board of Commissioners," meeting the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month. Three members are listed: Terry V. Wendt (District 1), Carl E. Grotelueschen (District 2), Jim Mejstrik (District 3). Colfax 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 Colfax 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