Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Fond du Lac County Jail/Secure Detention Facility

Operated byFond du Lac County Sheriff's Office
Jail address63 Western Avenue, Fond du Lac, WI 54935
BedsNot found

Source: Fond du Lac County - Jail Information · checked 2026-09-19

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✓Who is in custody
✗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
✓Phone, video and commissary rates

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Fond du Lac County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-19. 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 Ryan F. Waldschmidt

Runs the jailFond du Lac County Sheriff's Office operates the Fond du Lac County Jail/Secure Detention Facility
How the office is filledElected, four-year term, Wis. Stat. ch. 59
Statutory basisWisconsin law requires the Sheriff to take charge and custody of the County Jail/Secure Detention Facility, per Wis. Stat. 59.27(1)

Still needed

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

Source: Fond du Lac County - Sheriff · checked 2026-09-19

The Judges

Wisconsin circuit court judges are elected on a nonpartisan ballot to six-year terms under Wis. Const. art. VII — state judicial officers, not county officials.

Fond du Lac County Circuit Court

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 2026-09-19

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 boardNot found
Where the jail money is decidedNot found

Notes on the record

Jail information page describes bond payment methods (cash, money orders, cashier's checks, credit cards via GPS system, Stellar Teller kiosk) and notes transaction fees apply to Stellar Teller and credit card payments, though specific fee amounts were not stated on the page opened.
fdlsheriff.com returned 403 errors on several sub-pages (about-us, jail main page) during some fetch attempts; content was recovered via other successful fetches of the same domain.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Fond du Lac 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 2026-09-19 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered