The Detention Center
Wood County Jail
- Operated byWood County Sheriff's Department
- Jail address400 Market Street, Wisconsin Rapids, WI 54495
- FeesProcessing fee $40; daily fee for sentenced inmates $10/day; nurse visit $10; doctor visit $25; drug test $6
- Bond postingAt the Clerk of Courts (weekdays) or the jail lobby; credit card payments accepted through Government Payment Service, Inc., with a transaction fee
- Jail AdministratorTheodore Ashbeck — Captain / Jail Administrator; Lieutenant Susanna Wagner serves as Assistant Jail Administrator
Source: Wood County Wisconsin · 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 Shawn Becker
- Runs the jailThe Wood County Sheriff's Department operates the county jail in Wisconsin Rapids
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, Wis. Stat. ch. 59; site states he was first elected Sheriff on November 6, 2018 and has served the county since 1997
- Statutory basisWis. Stat. ch. 59 (county sheriff has 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: Wood County Wisconsin · 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.
Wood 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 boardNot found
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- Local news coverage (WSAW-TV, Dec 2024 and Mar 2025 stories) reported that Wood County completed a new jail facility and transferred inmates from the old facility to the new one in March 2025 after a ribbon-cutting in December 2024; the county's own Sheriff's Department page still lists the jail address as 400 Market Street, Wisconsin Rapids, and does not give a bed count, so a formal building history (year built, cost, funding, beds, expansions) could not be confirmed from an official source.
- No PREA page, inmate roster, budget, inspection reports, contracts, or death records were found on the county's own site.
- State inspection/oversight: Wisconsin DOC Division of Community Corrections inspects county jails under Wis. Admin. Code DOC 350; applicability to Wood County jail not independently confirmed on the sheriff's site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Wood 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