The Detention Center
La Crosse County Jail
- Operated byLa Crosse County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address333 Vine Street, La Crosse, WI
- Beds172 beds across 8 housing pods (17-30 beds/pod), plus 23 receiving cells including a 7-bed medical area
- Facility historyCurrent Law Enforcement Center opened September 1997; expanded in 2011
Source: La Crosse County - Jail Services Division · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✗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 — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1997 (current Law Enforcement Center/jail)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds172 (plus 23 receiving/medical cells)
Since then
- 2011 expansion
The Sheriff
Sheriff John Siegel
- Runs the jailThe La Crosse County Sheriff's Office operates the La Crosse County Jail at the Courthouse and Law Enforcement Center
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, Wis. Stat. ch. 59
- Statutory basisWis. Stat. ch. 59 gives the elected county sheriff custody of the county jail
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: La Crosse County Sheriff's Office · 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.
La Crosse County Circuit 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 2026-09-19
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 boardLa Crosse County Board of Supervisors
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- The 'Inmate Locator' page on the county's own site does not display a roster directly; it links out to VINELink for lookups, so the roster check is marked no.
- The posting-bond page describes in-person and after-hours online (GovPayNow/AllPaid) bond payment options and notes online payments include transaction fees, but does not amount to a full published fee schedule.
- State inspection/oversight: Wisconsin county jails are subject to inspection by the WI Department of Corrections, Division of Community Corrections, under Wis. Admin. Code DOC 350; no county-specific inspection report was found on the La Crosse County site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in La Crosse 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