The Detention Center
Rusk County Jail
- Operated byRusk County Sheriff's Office
- Jail addressNot found (Sheriff's Office business line is listed at Rusk County Government Center, 311 Miner Ave. E, Suite L100, Ladysmith, WI, per county directory; jail's own street address not separately confirmed)
- BedsNot found on the county's own site
- Bond processing fee$10 per bond, non-refundable, effective 5/1/2016
- Booking fee$20, effective 1/1/2018
- Huber program fee$18/day for Rusk County inmates; $20/day plus $50 processing fee for transfers
- Jail renovation/replacement projectCounty has an Ad Hoc New Jail Project Construction Committee and solicited architectural RFP responses (e.g., Venture Architects) for jail/courthouse renovation as of 2025; no completed new facility confirmed
Source: Rusk County, WI - Jail · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗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
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
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 Phil Grassmann
- Runs the jailRusk County Sheriff's Office operates the Rusk County Jail
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, Wis. Stat. ch. 59; Grassmann was appointed by Gov. Tony Evers on March 7, 2025 to complete the unexpired term (ending January 2027) of Sheriff Jeffery Wallace, who retired
- Statutory basisWis. Stat. ch. 59 (county sheriff)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Rusk County 2025-2026 Start County Directory (ruskcounty.org) · 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.
Rusk 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 boardRusk County Board of Supervisors; Chair Phil Unterschuetz →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The Sheriff's Office main page (ruskcounty.org/sheriff) does not itself name the sheriff; confirmation of the current sheriff came from the county's own 2025-2026 Start County Directory PDF, also hosted on ruskcounty.org.
- Many ruskcounty.org paths (e.g. /departments/law-enforcement-sheriff/jail/, /index.asp?... pages, /jailroster) were disallowed by the site's robots.txt and could not be fetched; content on those pages could not be confirmed.
- Rusk County has an active Ad Hoc New Jail Project / Construction Committee and solicited jail/courthouse renovation design proposals (e.g., a Venture Architects RFP response) as of 2025, indicating the existing jail may be renovated or replaced, but no new facility has opened.
- What was tried: ruskcounty.org/departments/law-enforcement-sheriff/jail/ (robots disallowed), ruskcounty.org/index.asp?SEC=613B6659-60FC-4C28-9DE3-5C83979AF457&DE=942F5B77-87E0-4354-A717-B6055A2FD7A5 (robots disallowed), ruskcounty.org/jailroster (robots disallowed), ruskcounty.org/robots.txt (robots disallowed).
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Rusk 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