The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byCuster County Sheriff's Office
- County site names a distinct jail facilityNo — the sheriff's office page states the sheriff has charge and custody of the jail but does not give it a separate name, address, or capacity figure
- Inmate lookupPage links to the State of Nebraska's Inmate Population Search (dcs-inmatesearch.ne.gov) rather than publishing its own roster
- What was triedcustercountyne.gov/ (fetched, harvested nav); custercountyne.gov/sheriff-office/ (fetched, no jail name/address/capacity given); custercountyne.gov/budgets/ (fetched, landing page only, no itemized sheriff/jail figures)
Source: Custer County Sheriff's Office · 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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Daniel Osmond
- Runs the jailYes — the sheriff's office page states the sheriff "has charge and custody of the jail and its prisoners"; no separate jail department is named
- Office116 S 11th, Broken Bow, NE 68822
- Contact(308) 872-6418
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Custer 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 →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Custer County publishes a general Budgets page (https://custercountyne.gov/budgets/) but the fetched content did not show a sheriff- or jail-specific budget line, so "budget" is recorded "no" rather than assumed.
- The county's own site links to the State of Nebraska's inmate population search rather than publishing its own roster; per the universal rule, a state tool linked from the county page does not count as the county publishing its own roster, so "roster" is recorded "no".
- Board governance discrepancy, re-confirmed this session: county's own site says "Commissioners"; 2008 Blue Book says "Supervisors" — see commissioners.note.
- 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.
- Custer County's own site uses the term "County Board of Commissioners" (the county-board landing page and navigation both say "Commissioners," never "Supervisors"), with seven district members: Anne Gibbons (D1), Tammy Kleeb (D2), Clay Govier (D3), James Markham (D4), Charles "Chip" Blowers (D5), Lynn Longmore (D6), Sara Parliament (D7). This directly contradicts the 2008 Nebraska Blue Book, which lists Custer among the 27 township-organization Board-of-Supervisors counties — exactly the kind of discrepancy the state layer flagged as possible. Re-confirmed this session from the county's own site: the board is called "Commissioners," not "Supervisors," even though it retains the seven-district structure typical of the Blue Book's supervisor counties. The county's own current usage ("Commissioners") is recorded here as the more current source, while the conflict with the 2008 Blue Book is flagged rather than silently resolved.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Custer 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