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The State Line

The county runs the jail. Nebraska decides whether the county has to tell you about it.

Before you click a county, here are the rules that county is playing by. Three questions, asked the same way of every state.

• Does anybody inspect this jail? The Nebraska Jail Standards Board is real and is created by Neb. Rev. Stat. 83-4,124, which places the board 'within the Nebraska Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice' (the Nebraska Crime Commission) for administrative and budgetary purposes. The board has 12 members: the Director of Correctional Services (or designee), the State Fire Marshal (or designee), and ten members appointed by the Governor from lists submitted by county officials, sheriffs, bar associations and police organizations. The board writes the standards; the actual inspecting is done by Crime Commission staff — the Jail Standards Division — because Neb. Rev. Stat. 83-4,131 assigns inspection to 'personnel of the Nebraska Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice.' · Annual in practice. Neb. Rev. Stat. 83-4,131 mandates inspection but does not itself state a cadence; the Crime Commission's Jail Standards page states the division conducts 'annual inspections of each detention facility to monitor compliance with the Standards,' and the Crime Commission's 2017 annual update reports that 'staff completed an annual inspection of all 69 adult jails, 3 juvenile detention centers, and 2 staff secure facilities in the state in 2017.' The Jail Standards Board meets quarterly to review inspection reports and take official action. Title 81 NAC Chapter 1, section 003 gives Crime Commission personnel authority to inspect 'at any reasonable hour which they deem necessary'; section 004 requires the facility administrator to file written compliance notification within one year of the initial evaluation, with updated notifications required 'at the discretion of the Board, however, not more often than annually.' Facilities accredited by a nationally recognized correctional association are exempt from board jurisdiction under 83-4,126(2) but must file annual proof of accreditation. · Neb. Rev. Stat. 83-4,124 to 83-4,134.01 (Jail Standards Board; creation, standards, inspection), principally 83-4,124 (board created within the Crime Commission), 83-4,126 and 83-4,127 to 83-4,130 (minimum construction, maintenance and operation standards), 83-4,131 (inspection and written report within thirty days) and 83-4,134 (facilities may be closed for violation of the minimum standards). County jails are separately made subject to the board's rules by Neb. Rev. Stat. 47-101 and 47-105; city jails by 47-201. The standards themselves are codified as Title 81 of the Nebraska Administrative Code (Nebraska Minimum Jail Standards for Adult Jail Facilities).
  yes
• Does the law require a death in custody to be reported? State law requires a death in custody to be reported.
  yes
• Is the result published? There is the public list — but it has fallen behind. They keep count. They just stopped reporting it.
  partial

Nebraska has 93 counties. The Crime Commission's Jail Standards Division inspects every adult jail annually — 69 adult jails, 3 juvenile detention centers and 2 staff secure facilities in 2017; the Jail Standards page currently describes '72 active jail facilities and 4 juvenile detention facilities.' Those facility counts are larger than the number of counties with a jail because they include city/police jails (Norfolk PD is the one municipal facility appearing in the state jail-data reporting list), short-term holding facilities, and counties with more than one facility (Holt County appears twice). The figure of 64 counties with a jail is derived by counting the distinct counties in the Crime Commission's own 66-entry jail-data reporting list; it should be treated as the best available count rather than an official published one, because no state-published county-by-county jail directory was located and Nebraska's standards distinguish Type I and Type II holding facilities (24-hour and 96-hour maximums) from Type III detention facilities, so some of those 64 counties hold people only briefly before transferring them. Where arrestees from the roughly 29 counties with no reporting jail are held was not established from the sources reviewed; Neb. Rev. Stat. 47-302 to 47-308 authorize joint county-and-city jails, and 47-306 lets one jurisdiction contract with another for use of its jail. Structurally unusual features: (1) the county board of corrections mechanism (23-2801 to 23-2806), required at 150,000+ population and optional below it, which shifts the jail out of the sheriff's office and into a county corrections department — Douglas, Lancaster and Hall counties report to the state as corrections departments; note that 23-2803 describes the board of corrections as hearing arguments and making recommendations, so the precise division of authority between board, department and sheriff is a matter of county-level arrangement; (2) the county attorney serves as ex officio county coroner, so the official who certifies a custody death is the same office that prosecutes; (3) the mandatory grand jury under 29-1401 for every death in custody, impaneled within thirty days; (4) county boards are statutorily required to visit the county jail quarterly (47-109); (5) county governing bodies are split — the 2008 Nebraska Blue Book states 'sixty-six counties are commissioner counties and are governed by a board of commissioners' with three or five members, while 27 township-organization counties are governed by seven-member boards of supervisors: Adams, Antelope, Boyd, Buffalo, Burt, Butler, Clay, Cuming, Custer, Dixon, Dodge, Fillmore, Franklin, Gage, Hall, Harlan, Holt, Kearney, Knox, Merrick, Nance, Phelps, Platte, Saunders, Thurston, Valley and Washington (all serve four-year terms; this list is as of the 2008 Blue Book and a small number of counties may have changed form since). Inspection reports are recorded as 'unknown' for public availability: Neb. Rev. Stat. 83-4,131 requires a written report within thirty days to 'the appropriate governing body responsible for' the facility (i.e., the county board), and the Jail Standards Board reviews reports quarterly, but no state agency publishes inspection reports online and no statutory confidentiality provision or affirmative disclosure provision covering them was located. Standards are mandatory, not advisory: 47-105 requires the sheriff or jail administrator to conform to Jail Standards Board rules, and 83-4,134 permits a facility to be closed for violation of the minimum standards. No source reviewed indicates Nebraska county jails receive federal operating funding.