The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byHarlan County Sheriff's Office (per the state jail-agency reporting code "HARLANCOSOALMA")
- What was triedharlancounty.ne.gov (the county's own site, per the Nebraska Association of County Officials directory) returned PROVENANCE_REQUIRED / "URL not in provenance set" on repeated attempts this session; it was never returned by a WebSearch result, and the group's 5-search budget was already spent unlocking Hall County and the Garfield/Gosper/Grant/Greeley domains, so it could not be unlocked
Source: Nebraska Crime Commission — Jail record submission status table · 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 Not found
- Runs the jailStatutorily the sheriff has charge of the county jail under Neb. Rev. Stat. 47-105 and 23-1703. The Nebraska Crime Commission's jail-agency reporting table lists Harlan County as "HARLANCOSOALMA" — a Sheriff's Office (not a corrections department) based in Alma — indicating the Sheriff's Office runs the jail here
- How the office is filledElected countywide, four-year term (Neb. Rev. Stat. 32-520)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Nebraska Crime Commission — Jail record submission status table · 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's list, and the appointee then faces an uncontested retention vote (Neb. Const. Art. V § 21). No named county or district court judge for Harlan County was located from a source opened this session.
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
- Harlan County's own site (harlancounty.ne.gov) could not be fetched this session — it never appeared in a WebSearch result and the group's WebSearch budget (hard-capped at 5 for the whole group) was already spent unlocking Hall County and the four smaller counties in this group. All ten transparency checks are recorded 'no' because nothing was confirmed open and read on the county's own domain, not because the county necessarily fails to publish this information.
- The Nebraska Crime Commission's jail-agency reporting table does confirm Harlan County operates a reporting jail through its Sheriff's Office (code HARLANCOSOALMA).
- State-layer finding applies: no state agency publishes Jail Standards Board inspection reports.
- Not confirmed from the county's own site this session (see jail 'What was tried'). The 2008 Nebraska Blue Book's township-county list (in plains_states.json) places Harlan County among the 27 seven-member "Board of Supervisors" counties, but this could not be verified against Harlan County's own current site — and Hall County, which is on the same 2008 list, was found this session to now use "Board of Commissioners" on its own site, so the 2008 listing should not be assumed current for Harlan without direct verification.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Harlan 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