Brown County, South Dakota — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Brown County Jail

Operated byBrown County Sheriff's Office (Sheriff Dave Lunzman; Jail Administrator Keith Baker)
Detention commandKeith Baker — Jail Administrator
Address22 Court St. Suite 1, Aberdeen, SD 57401
Operations"24 hours/7 days a week"
Contact605-626-7101 (fax 605-725-2285)
Work-release fee"$290" upfront (covers urinalysis and the first two weeks at $20/day), then "$140.00 a week" thereafter
Out-of-county/out-of-state boarding rate"$75.00 a day for everyday they are housed"
VisitationRemote video visitation available through Reliance Telephone
ProgramsTrustee work program for sentenced prisoners; approved personal-item intake list (underwear, socks, bras)
2020 Census custodial population37 people on April 1, 2020, per the Prison Gerrymandering Project's republication of the Census correctional facility file — see plains_states.json
BudgetCommission meeting minutes for February 10, 2026 list payroll line items "Sheriff $63,907.47" and "Jail $81,360.51"

Source: Brown County, SD — Jail · checked 2026-08-25

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✓What it costs taxpayers
✗Deaths in custody — not published
✗PREA audits — not published
✗Independent inspection — not published
✓Who else it holds, and for how much
✗How to post bond — not published
✓Phone, video and commissary rates

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Brown County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-08-25. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

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 Dave Lunzman

Staffing"65 full time and 20 part-time employees at the Sheriff's Office", per the county's own Sheriff's Office page
How the office is filledElected countywide, four-year term (SDCL 7-7-1.1)
Contact22 Court Street, Aberdeen, SD 57402-0369; 605-626-7100

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Brown County, SD — Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-25

The Judges

South Dakota circuit judges are elected nonpartisan for an eight-year term (SD Const. Art. V §7; SDCL 16-6-3). Full-time magistrate judges are nominated by the circuit's presiding judge and approved by the Supreme Court (SDCL 16-12B-1.2). No county-specific judge names were located from a source opened this session.

Circuit Court — Fifth Judicial Circuit (4 judges; Brown is one of 9 member counties)

Not found

Magistrate Court — Fifth Circuit (1 full-time magistrate judgeship circuit-wide)

Not found

Still needed

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

"budget" marked yes on the strength of a specific dollar payroll line for the Jail and Sheriff departments in a published commission meeting-minutes PDF, not a full department budget document — the general "2026 Annual Budget" link on brown.sd.us/department/auditors/budgets was seen but not itself opened for jail-specific figures.
"contracts" marked yes because the jail page publishes the rate Brown County charges to board other agencies' out-of-county/out-of-state prisoners ($75/day); this is a real published rate, not a full contract list.
South Dakota has no state agency that inspects adult county jails. See the state-layer entry in plains_states.json.
Board of County Commissioners: Duane Sutton (Chair), Mike Gage (Vice-Chair), Drew Dennert, Kyler Dinger, Mike Wiese. Meets "every Tuesday at 8:45 A.M. in the Brown County Commission Chambers, Courthouse Annex."

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Brown 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