The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byDixon County Sheriff's Office
- Jail arrangementCounty's own site confirms the Sheriff's Office manages the county jail, but gives no facility name, address, or bed count on the sheriff page itself
- What was triedhttps://dixoncountyne.gov/sheriff-office/ (opened and quoted verbatim; no facility name, capacity, or transparency data found); https://dixoncountyne.gov/county-board/board-meetings/ (opened — budget workshop agendas are posted for the county generally, but no corrections/jail-specific budget line was found)
Source: Dixon County, NE — 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 Tom Decker
- Runs the jailThe county's own site states the Sheriff's Office 'manage[s] the county jail'; no separate corrections department exists
- How the office is filledElected countywide, four-year term (Neb. Rev. Stat. 32-520)
- Office contactPO Box 900, Ponca, NE 68770; (402) 755-5608; dixonso@dixoncountyne.gov
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Dixon County, NE — Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-25
The Judges
Nebraska judges are merit-selected and are state, not county, officials: the Governor appoints from a judicial nominating commission list, and appointees then face retention elections (Neb. Const. Art. V §21). The county court judge sets bail at first appearance. No named district or county court judge for Dixon County was located from a source opened in this pass.
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
- This pass located the county's official site (dixoncountyne.gov) and its Sheriff's Office and County Board pages, resolving the previous pass's total gap on Dixon County (no fetchable site had been found). The Sheriff's own name and the Board of Supervisors' composition are now confirmed from the county's own domain; the jail itself has no published name, address, or transparency data on that domain.
- State-layer finding applies: Neb. Rev. Stat. 83-4,131 requires the Jail Standards Board's inspection report to go to the facility's governing body, not to the public; no publication by Dixon County was found.
- Board of Supervisors, seven members by district, confirmed against the county's own site: Don Andersen (D1), Deric Anderson (D2), Roger Peterson (D3), Neil R. Blohm (D4), Lisa Lunz (D5), Terry L. Nicholson (D6), Steve Hassler (D7). Meets the 2nd Tuesday of each month at 302 W 3rd Street, Ponca, NE 68770. This confirms Dixon County's Blue Book listing as a township-organization Board of Supervisors county.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Dixon 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