The Detention Center
No jail operated by Bennett County
- Operated byN/A — contracted
- Where Bennett County's prisoners go"The Bennett County Sheriff's Office currently contracts jail services through the City of Winner, South Dakota" — the Winner Jail, a municipal facility in Tripp County. This is the county's own site naming where its prisoners are held.
- Not a tribal-facility arrangementThe contract named on the county's own site is with the City of Winner, not with a tribal or BIA facility. Whether Bennett County also uses the Pine Ridge tribal or BIA detention facilities was not established from a source read here.
Source: Bennett County Sheriff's Office — Jail · checked 2026-08-25
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 Jason Erwin
- Runs a jailNo — Bennett County contracts jail services through the City of Winner, South Dakota (Tripp County) rather than operating its own facility
- TermElected, four-year term (SDCL 7-7-1.1)
- Office201 State Street (PO Box 726), Martin, SD 57551-0726; 605-685-6515; dispatch 605-842-1014
- Tribal jurisdictionBennett County lies entirely within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. South Dakota is a non-Public Law 280 state, so a reservation inside the county's boundaries does not put detention there under the county sheriff. No mention of tribal jurisdiction, the Pine Ridge Reservation, or the Bureau of Indian Affairs appeared on the Bennett County Sheriff's Office site itself; this note reflects the state-layer research, not a county-published statement.
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Bennett County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-25
The Judges
South Dakota circuit judges are elected in nonpartisan elections to eight-year terms (SD Constitution Art. V §7; SDCL 16-6-3); a vacancy is filled by the Governor from nominees of the Judicial Qualifications Commission. Magistrate judges, who often set bail in practice, are appointed rather than elected: full-time magistrates are certified by the presiding judge and approved by the Supreme Court for four-year terms (SDCL 16-12B-1.2, 16-12B-1.3); magistrate courts have concurrent jurisdiction with circuit courts to fix bond (SDCL 16-12B-7). Bennett County sits in the Sixth Judicial Circuit, together with Todd County — both, in different ways, jurisdictionally distinct from the rest of the circuit's counties.
Circuit Court — Sixth Judicial Circuit (Bennett is one of 14 counties in the circuit; judges not named in a source read here)
- 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
- Bennett County is one of the six South Dakota counties lying entirely within a reservation (Pine Ridge). Per the group brief, this jurisdictional split is not characterised as a gap or a failure — it is the law. The county sheriff's own site plainly states it contracts jail services out to the City of Winner rather than running a facility of its own.
- No state agency inspects adult county jails in South Dakota; SDCL ch. 24-11 contains no inspection section. state_inspection is recorded as empty per the group brief.
- Board of County Commissioners, under SDCL 24-11-2 (jail establishment duty) and SDCL 7-8-20 (general powers). No dedicated Bennett County government website (as opposed to the Sheriff's Office site) was located; no commissioner names, board page, or minutes URL are recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Bennett 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