The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byNot established
- County has no county websiteThe South Dakota Association of County Officials' counties directory lists Haakon among the counties that do not maintain a website
- State resource directoryDakota At Home (a state, not county, resource site) lists the Haakon County Sheriff as handling "county jails/correctional facilities" among general duties, but names no specific facility
- Not in 2020 Census facility listHaakon County does not appear among the county jails counted in the Prison Gerrymandering Project's republished 2020 Census facility file cited in the state-layer research
Source: South Dakota Association of County Officials — Counties directory · 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 Tim Quinn
- Runs the jailYes, by statutory default — the elected sheriff is the jail's officer in charge under SDCL 24-11-13; no county-specific source confirms current jail operations
- How the office is filledElected countywide, four-year term (SDCL 7-7-1.1)
- Office address140 S. Howard Avenue, Philip, SD 57567 (also given as PO Box 249, 140 S. Howard)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: South Dakota Sheriffs' Association — Haakon County · checked 2026-08-25
The Judges
South Dakota circuit judges are elected in a nonpartisan election for an eight-year term (S.D. Const. Art. V, section 7; SDCL 16-6-3); a mid-term vacancy is filled by the Governor from two or more nominees of the Judicial Qualifications Commission. Magistrate judges, who in practice handle most rural first appearances and bail-setting under SDCL 16-12B-7, are not elected: the presiding judge of the circuit nominates them and the Supreme Court approves or disapproves the appointment (SDCL 16-12B-1.2); full-time magistrates serve four-year terms, part-time magistrates serve at the presiding judge's pleasure (SDCL 16-12B-1.3). Named circuit or magistrate judges for Haakon County were not located from any source opened.
Circuit Court — Sixth Circuit
- Not found
Magistrate 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
- Haakon County does not maintain its own county website, confirmed on both the South Dakota Association of County Officials' counties directory and by direct WebFetch attempts against likely domains — nothing on any of the ten checks can be attributed to a county-published source. That absence is itself the finding, not a research gap.
- State-layer finding applies: no state agency inspects adult county jails in South Dakota (SDCL ch. 24-11 has no inspection section); the only outside check is a circuit judge's discretionary visitation power under SDCL 24-11-27.
- Board of County Commissioners exists under SDCL ch. 7-8; Haakon County maintains no county website (per the SDACO counties directory), so no commissioners page, member names, or minutes were located.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Haakon 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