The State Line
Before you click a county, here are the rules that county is playing by. Three questions, asked the same way of every state.
North Dakota has 53 counties and only 20 of them host an operating adult jail. This is the single most important structural fact about the state: for 33 of 53 counties, the jail your neighbor is held in is in someone else's county, run by someone else's sheriff or by a board your county may or may not sit on. The 20 host counties, with facility, grade and rated capacity from the current DOCR inspection reports, are: Barnes (Barnes County Correctional Center, Valley City, grade 1, 46); Bottineau (Bottineau County Correctional Center, grade 1, 22); Burleigh (Burleigh Morton Detention Center, Bismarck, grade 1, 555 — jointly Burleigh and Morton); Cass (Cass County Jail, Fargo, grade 1, 540); Grand Forks (Grand Forks County Correctional Center, grade 1, 308); McKenzie (McKenzie County Correctional Facility, Watford City, grade 1, 135); McLean (McLean County Detention Center, Washburn, grade 1, 30); Mercer (Mercer County Jail, Stanton, grade 1, 52); Mountrail (Mountrail County Correctional Center, Stanley, grade 1, 42); Pembina (Pembina County Correctional Center, in the city of Cavalier, grade 2, 18); Pierce (Heart of America Correctional & Treatment Center, Rugby, grade 1, 142); Ramsey (Lake Region Correctional Facility, Devils Lake, grade 1, 105); Richland (Richland County Jail, Wahpeton, grade 1, 33); Rolette (Rolette County Law Enforcement Center, Rolla, grade 1, 48); Stark (Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center / Dickinson Adult Detention Center, grade 1, 124); Stutsman (Stutsman County Correctional Center, Jamestown, grade 1, 92); Traill (Traill County Jail, Hillsboro — grade and capacity NOT established; the DOCR inspection PDF at the posted URL contains no machine-readable text and could not be read, and Traill appears as a SENDING county to the Cass, Grand Forks, Burleigh Morton and Barnes facilities, which suggests its own facility is short-hold); Walsh (Walsh County Correctional Center, Grafton, grade 2, 16 — holds pretrial and convicted persons up to ninety days and transfers female inmates to Grand Forks County and Ramsey County); Ward (Ward County Detention Center, Minot, grade 1, 286); Williams (Williams County Correctional Center, Williston, grade 1, 231). Counting Morton, which co-owns the Bismarck facility but hosts nothing itself, 21 counties own or co-own a jail. Grades matter and are set by DOCR under NDCC 12-44.1-06 after inspection: grade one holds inmates up to one year, grade two up to ninety days, grade three up to ninety-six hours, and grade four is "an adult lockup or court holding facility in which individuals may not be detained overnight." Four counties have only a grade four court holding room and no jail — Adams (Hettinger, found "not in compliance"), Emmons (Linton, capacity 1, compliant), McIntosh (Ashley, capacity 2, "determined not to be in use and had held no persons in the past year," non-compliant, and a full facility inspection must be completed before any inmates can be housed there) and Wells (Fessenden, capacity 4, compliant). Bowman, Burleigh, Morton and Stark also have separate grade four court holding rooms, and Cass County, Minot Police Department and Tioga Police Department have grade four lockups. None of these counts as a jail. THE REGIONAL AND MULTI-COUNTY FACILITIES. Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center (Dickinson) is the clearest regional authority in the state: it is "governed by a board of seven (7) county commissioners with each county represented" — Billings, Bowman, Dunn, Golden Valley, Hettinger, Slope and Stark — and also takes inmates from Adams and McKenzie counties and the cities of Beach, Belfield, Killdeer, Medora, Bowman and New England, plus U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Marshals Service and DOCR Parole and Probation. Lake Region Correctional Facility (Devils Lake) operates under a joint powers agreement with a seven-member board: two from the City of Devils Lake, two from Ramsey County, and one each from Nelson, Benson and Eddy counties; it houses inmates from Ramsey, Cass, Foster, Wells, Nelson, Benson, Towner, Eddy, Walsh and Cavalier counties plus the U.S. Marshals Service, DOCR Parole and Probation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the city of Devils Lake. Burleigh Morton Detention Center (Bismarck) is a two-county facility under "Burleigh County Sheriff Kelly Leben ... and the Burleigh and Morton County Commission governing authority," holding people from Emmons, Grant, Kidder, Logan, McIntosh, Mercer, Sheridan, Sioux, Dickey, Traill, Griggs, Adams, LaMoure and Cass counties. McKenzie County Correctional Facility (Watford City) is run by a "McKenzie County Joint Powers Board" and takes McKenzie, Adams, Williams, Cass, Divide and Ramsey county inmates and overflow from the Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center. Heart of America Correctional & Treatment Center (Rugby) is not a joint-powers body despite its regional name — it operates "under the authority of the Pierce County Sheriff Josh Siegler, Jail Administrator Mike Graner, and the governing authority of the Pierce County Commission" — but functions regionally, housing Pierce, Wells, McHenry and Towner county inmates and the cities of Harvey and Rugby. WHERE THE OTHER 32 COUNTIES SEND PEOPLE, as stated in the counties' host facilities' own 2025-2026 inspection reports: Adams to Southwest Multi-County, McKenzie and Burleigh Morton; Benson to Lake Region; Billings, Bowman, Dunn, Golden Valley, Hettinger and Slope to Southwest Multi-County; Burke to Ward, Bottineau and Mountrail; Cavalier to Lake Region, Pembina and Rolette; Dickey to Stutsman, Barnes, Richland and Burleigh Morton; Divide to Williams and McKenzie; Eddy to Lake Region, Stutsman and Mercer; Emmons to Burleigh Morton and Stutsman; Foster to Lake Region, Stutsman and Barnes; Grant to Burleigh Morton and Mercer; Griggs to Burleigh Morton, Stutsman and Barnes; Kidder to Burleigh Morton and Stutsman; LaMoure to Burleigh Morton, Stutsman and Barnes; Logan to Burleigh Morton and Stutsman; McHenry to Heart of America, Ward and Bottineau; McIntosh to Burleigh Morton and Stutsman; Nelson to Lake Region; Oliver to Mercer; Ransom to Cass, Stutsman, Richland and Barnes; Renville to Ward and Bottineau; Sargent to Stutsman, Richland and Barnes; Sheridan to Burleigh Morton, Mercer and McLean; Sioux to Burleigh Morton; Steele to Barnes; Towner to Lake Region, Heart of America and Rolette; and Wells to Lake Region, Heart of America and Stutsman. Every one of the 32 jail-less counties is accounted for in at least one host facility's contract list. Counties also routinely hold each other's overflow in both directions — Mercer, for example, takes Burleigh and Morton inmates even though Burleigh Morton is twelve times its size. Federal per-diem boarding is pervasive: U.S. Marshals Service, Bureau of Prisons, ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Air Force at Minot AFB and the Bureau of Indian Affairs all appear across the inspection reports. That is contract revenue, not federal operating funding — no source reviewed indicates North Dakota county jails receive federal funds to operate. The state is also now a paying customer: in December 2025 DOCR agreed to pay the Burleigh Morton Detention Center $105 per day for 120 guaranteed beds, about $4.6 million a year, to relieve state prison crowding after a proposed Grand Forks County arrangement fell through — a lower rate than the $115 per day the facility charges other counties and federal agencies. NOTE ON COUNT DISCREPANCIES. North Dakota's federal Death in Custody Reporting Act plan states the state has "22 county jails/detention centers, and 3 state correctional facilities," and the Census Bureau's 2020 correctional population file lists 22 local facilities including a Cavalier County Jail in Langdon and separate Burleigh and Morton county facilities that have since been consolidated into the single Burleigh Morton Detention Center. Neither matches the 20 operating adult facilities on DOCR's current inspection page. The 20 figure is the best current one because it is derived facility by facility from dated 2025-2026 DOCR inspection reports, but it depends on that page being a complete and current list of licensed facilities, which no source states explicitly. GOVERNING BODY. NDCC 11-11-01: "Each organized county shall have a board of county commissioners which shall consist of not less than three nor more than five members." Commissioners are elected by district (11-11-02, "Each county commissioner shall be chosen by the qualified electors of the district of which the commissioner is a resident"), serve four-year terms, and their terms begin the first Monday in December rather than in January like other county officers (11-10-05.1). The board's jail power is NDCC 11-11-14(29), authority "[t]o construct, equip, operate, and maintain county buildings, including court facilities, correction centers, jails, and other law enforcement facilities." North Dakota does allow variant county government: the county manager form under NDCC ch. 11-09, consolidated county offices under ch. 11-08, "tool chest" legislation permitting offices to be combined or separated under ch. 11-10.2, and home rule charters under ch. 11-09.1, which the North Dakota County Commissioners Association says 12 of the 53 counties have adopted. No North Dakota county has abolished its elected sheriff — NDCC 11-10-02 requires every county to have one, with no consolidated-law-enforcement carve-out of the kind Kansas has for Riley County. THE HEADLINE. North Dakota is at opposite ends of two scales. Its jail inspection regime is one of the stronger ones in the country: a state agency with a statutory duty to write binding standards, inspect every facility at least annually, grade it by how long it may hold anyone, bill it for monitoring, and close it — and it publishes the full narrative inspection report for every facility, naming the sheriff, the jail administrator, the rated capacity, the population that day, and each of the 108 standards passed or failed. But its death-in-custody transparency is close to nonexistent: no reporting statute at all, deaths surfacing to the federal government by way of "media searches," and not one published number.
Compare all fifty states →That is the one thing every county in America has in common. The jail belongs to the people of the county and is paid for out of their taxes. The sheriff who runs it is elected. The judge who decides who sits in it is elected or appointed. Three offices, enormous power, and almost nobody watching.
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
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. The Justice Department is required to count deaths in custody and does not do it properly — a Senate investigation found it failed to identify more than 990 such deaths in a single year. MoBetta is building the county-by-county record instead.
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriffs who run these jails are elected. So are the commissioners who pay for them.
Deadlines, ID rules and North Dakota’s own election office, from vote.gov — the official U.S. government voter site. Where you vote on the day is set by your county election office.
North Dakota — all 53 counties open. Click any county on the map, or see the transparency scoreboard below.
This is our jail
Every county in North Dakota was checked against the same ten questions on 2026-08-25. This measures disclosure, not conduct — what a county publishes about a building its taxpayers own. A county can raise its score in an afternoon by posting a document.
Two state agencies do what these counties don't. The State Department of Health inspects every county jail each year under state law and publishes the report — Wyoming has no such agency at all — and the State Auditor and Inspector audits every county's books. Both are the state's disclosure, not the county's. Not one Oklahoma county posts its own inspection result, so every county page here links the state report instead. And on the number that matters most, no state agency stands in: not one of the 77 publishes a death in custody.