The Detention Center
The county publishes no formal name for this facility.
- Operated byNot established — Buffalo County does not appear among the 26 South Dakota counties with a facility in the 2020 Census correctional-facility file (see plains_states.json), and the county's own Offices page lists a Sheriff but no jail, detention, or corrections department
- Where prisoners goNot established from a source opened this session. Buffalo County's own site lists no jail/detention department, and no page found this session states where the county's prisoners are held.
- Gann Valley noteBuffalo County's seat, Gann Valley, is "the least populous county seat in the United States" (10 people), per Wikipedia
Source: Buffalo County, SD — Offices · 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 applicable — no county-operated jail found
- Original costNot applicable
- Paid for byNot applicable
- BedsNot applicable
Since then
- Not applicable
The Sheriff
Sheriff Wayne Willman
- ContactPO Box 115, Buffalo County Courthouse, Gann Valley, SD 57341-0115; 605-293-3231; buffalocoso@midstatesd.net
- How the office is filledElected countywide, four-year term (SDCL 7-7-1.1)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Buffalo 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.
- 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
- Buffalo County is not among the 26-county floor of counties with a jail in the 2020 Census file, and the county's own site confirms no jail/detention/corrections department among its listed offices. This is recorded as a finding, not a gap, but where its prisoners are actually held was not established from any source opened this session — unlike some neighboring counties, no page stated a specific host county or facility.
- South Dakota has no state agency that inspects adult county jails. See the state-layer entry in plains_states.json.
- Board of County Commissioners: Rex Zastrow, Dawn Cable, Donita Loudner — from the county's own website.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Buffalo 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