The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byHitchcock County Sheriff's Office
- What was triedhitchcockcounty.ne.gov homepage, sheriff page, about page, county court page, and office-services page were opened; none names or describes a distinct jail facility, address, or capacity
- Sheriff position posting (Dec 2024)The county's own vacancy posting for sheriff describes "24 hour dispatch/jailer staff" and prefers "jail administration certification," indicating the office operates a jail, but does not name or locate it separately from the Sheriff's Office
- State reporting data"HITCHCOCKCOSOTRENTON" appears with active submission history in the Nebraska Crime Commission's jail record status table — a state source, not the county's own site
Source: Hitchcock County Sheriff Position posting · 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 Ryan L. King
- Runs the jailPer Neb. Rev. Stat. 47-105 and 23-1703 (no county board of corrections identified for Hitchcock County)
- Office229 East D Street, Trenton, NE 69044 (mailing: PO Box 306)
- ContactNon-emergency (308) 334-5444; email sheriff967@hitchcockcountyne.gov
- StaffDeputies Thomas W. Jones, Justin Stewart, Michael Buffington-Damon, per the sheriff's own page
- CorroborationNamed as "Ryan L. King, Hitchcock County Sheriff" in the Board of Commissioners' own January 5, 2026 meeting minutes
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Hitchcock County Sheriff · 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). The county court page names only court staff (Linda K. Smith, Clerk Magistrate) and links to the "11th Judicial District" and Nebraska Supreme Court sites; no sitting judge's name was found on a source opened this session.
District Court — 11th Judicial District
- 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
- A separate domain, hitchcockcountysheriff.org, is referenced by name (not as a clickable href captured by this session's fetch) on the sheriff page; a direct fetch attempt on that domain was refused for lack of provenance and was not pursued further, so nothing from it is cited here.
- No jail-specific page, roster, budget, capacity, PREA, inspection, contract, bond-information, or fee content was found on hitchcockcounty.ne.gov.
- Neb. Rev. Stat. 83-4,131 requires Nebraska Crime Commission personnel to inspect a covered facility and deliver a written report within 30 days to the facility's governing body, not to the public. No state agency publishes these reports, and no county page publishing one was found.
- Hitchcock County's own site labels its governing body the "Board of Commissioners," meeting "1st & 3rd Monday of each month, unless a holiday, then Tuesday" at 229 East D St, Trenton. The January 5, 2026 minutes name Paul Nichols (Chair), Ron Wertz (elected Vice Chair for 2026), and Christopher Baker as the three commissioners present, with Margaret Pollmann as County Clerk. Hitchcock 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 Hitchcock 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