Search Wadena County Detention Facility Inmates

Wadena Detention Facility Overview

The Wadena County Detention Facility, also presented in county material as Wadena County Jail, is the sheriff-run county jail at 415 S Jefferson Street, Wadena, MN 56482. It is operated by the Wadena County Sheriff's Office. The facility is not a state prison, federal prison, ICE detention center, or separate municipal jail. The research map for Wadena County found one detention facility inside the county for inmate-population purposes, so this facility is the local jail page and the county roster is the main lookup source.

The jail holds a mix of county custody types. County material states that the facility houses minimum, medium, and maximum inmates, work-release inmates, and sentence-to-serve inmates. That means the same small jail may hold someone awaiting first appearance after arrest, someone serving a short local sentence, someone held for a local court matter, or someone approved for a work-release or sentence-to-serve program. A sentenced felony inmate committed to the Minnesota Department of Corrections is searched through the state DOC locator after transfer, not through this county jail page.

The county's official Wadena County Detention page is the source for the facility's capacity, VINE note, visitation rules, vendor links, mail format, and jail-administrator contact context.

The official detention page is also the best local source to recheck visitation and vendor information before relying on older printed notes.

Wadena Facility Capacity

Wadena County states that the detention facility is licensed to house 27 inmates. The live public roster snapshot inspected for the research file showed 16 listed booking records on June 18, 2026, at a report timestamp of 6:05:02 a.m. That snapshot is not an annual average and should not be used as a fixed population count. It does show that the jail is a small-capacity county facility, not a large regional jail.

The research did not locate an official county dashboard for annual adult bookings, average length of stay, race or sex breakdown, felony versus misdemeanor split, or held-for-other-agency totals. When those figures are not published, the safer approach is to use the licensed capacity, the dated roster snapshot, and the DOC inspection facts rather than estimate. The 2025 DOC inspection did not describe a current capacity crisis or overcrowding order in the extracted findings.

Look Up Wadena Jail Inmates

The Wadena County Detention Facility uses a public Crystal Reports in-custody report. The county landing page is Wadena County In-Custody List, and the linked direct report is Wadena County Jail in-custody report. The report is a current custody list, not a fielded search form. It has no name box, date filter, facility dropdown, Search button, Reset button, or profile click-through. On desktop, browser Find by last name is the practical search method.

1. Open the county In-Custody List landing page and follow the county's report link.
2. Check the report timestamp because the county warns the report may not be current, accurate, or complete.
3. Use browser find for the last name, especially if the list is long or fixed-width on a phone.
4. Read booking date, name, charges, status, sentence start date, and projected release date when shown.
5. If the person is not listed, call the jail, check VINELink, or consider DOC, federal, ICE, or another-county transfer.

Current Wadena County Jail custody and booking records are covered in more detail on the jail inmate records page. For this facility, the key limit is timing. The roster text says information attempts to update every 24 hours, so a same-day arrest may require a phone call before the web report changes.

The county's In-Custody List landing page is the official public doorway to the Wadena County Detention Facility roster.

The landing page matters because it connects the direct custody report back to the sheriff's official county website.

Wadena Jail Address and Phone

Use the jail phone for current custody, release, visitation, and facility-specific questions. Use Sheriff's Office records channels when the need is a record request rather than a live custody question. The jail and several related county offices share the Jefferson Street government center area, including the court and county attorney, but each office handles a different part of the arrest and case process.

Wadena Jail Visitation Schedule

Wadena County publishes in-person visitation rules for the jail. Inmates are allowed one visit per visitation session for 20 minutes. Adult visitors must be at least 18. Visitors under 18 must be with an adult and may visit immediate family only. Photo identification is required before visiting. Visits can be denied or ended for eating or drinking in visitation areas, cell phone use, intoxication, false identification, suggestive activity, inappropriate dress, disruptive conduct, safety or security risk, or failure to follow staff directions.

Call the jail before a long trip. Public visitation windows can change for safety, staffing, discipline, lockdown, court movement, or medical reasons. The court page for the same Jefferson Street address notes free surface-lot and on-street parking at the courthouse, but the jail page does not publish a separate visitor-lot entrance description.

Mail Phone and Commissary

Wadena County publishes a simple mail format for people in the jail. Ordinary mail is inspected by staff. Legal mail is not screened. The county says all correspondence other than cash left for an inmate must go through U.S. mail. Because the county page does not publish a full ban list, call the jail before sending books, money orders, photos, greeting cards with electronics, packages, or any non-letter item.

Published county sources did not provide a detailed CIDNET, Reliance, or JailATM fee table for Wadena County Detention Facility. Do not assume a deposit charge, call rate, video fee, or refund policy from another jail. Vendor websites and the jail should be checked for the current cost before funds are sent.

Wadena Facility Records Requests

When the roster does not answer the question, the Wadena County Sheriff's Office Data Requests process is the public-record fallback. The county says its sheriff's office maintains records for its own agency only. Menahga, Sebeka, Verndale, and Wadena Police Departments maintain their own records and reports. This matters when the detention facility held a person after another agency's arrest, because the sheriff may have jail custody data while the arresting police department holds the original incident report.

The Sheriff's Office Data Request Form can be used for incident reports, calls for service, transcripts, accident reports, photos, and audio. The form can be emailed to wcso.records@wcmn.us, mailed to Wadena County Sheriff's Office at 415 Jefferson Street S, Wadena, MN 56482, or faxed to 218-632-6057. Inspection is free, copies under 10 pages are free, copies per 10 pages cost $2.00, photos on CD cost $10.00, and audio on DVD costs $15.00. If the data is not public or does not exist, the county says it will explain the response.

Transfers Beyond Wadena Jail

A person may leave the Wadena County Detention Facility without being released to the street. After a felony sentence, an adult committed to the Commissioner of Corrections moves into the Minnesota Department of Corrections system. The MNDOC public viewer searches adults still under DOC jurisdiction by name or MNDOC Offender ID. Newly sentenced people may take several business days to display. DOC visitation, mail, phone, and money rules are facility-specific and should not be copied from the Wadena jail rules.

Federal and immigration custody are separate as well. The Federal Bureau of Prisons locator covers federal inmates from 1982 to present, usually after federal commitment. Federal pretrial defendants may be in U.S. Marshals custody and housed in local or contract facilities before BOP records are useful. ICE's Online Detainee Locator is searched by A-number and country or by name, country of birth, and birth date. Wadena County research did not identify a BOP prison, ICE detention facility, dedicated federal detention center, state prison, or municipal jail inside the county.

DOC Inspection and Jail Standards

The Minnesota DOC 2025 inspection report is the main recent oversight source for the Wadena County Detention Facility. The inspection was conducted between October 1 and October 16, 2025, by Senior Detention Facility Inspector Lori Schopf. Officials present included Jail Administrator Tim Stroeing, Sheriff Mike Carr, and County Administrator Ryan Odden. The inspection included a facility walk-through, staff and inmate interviews, staff and inmate file reviews, documentation reviews, and video footage review.

The report listed mandatory-rule findings involving a mental-health screening referral that was not made, meal service not directly supervised on a reviewed date, formal counts outside the required eight-hour time frame, a well-being check entry where a meal pass was logged without all inmates being personally observed, and a medication administration record count discrepancy. Essential-rule findings included training documentation gaps, administrative-segregation review documentation, and a volunteer-agreement issue. Corrective actions included staff training, revised meal-delivery procedures, count tracking, medication accounting, and updated volunteer agreement language.

The same report's JJDPA audit found that 14 juveniles were processed in the Wadena County Jail from October 1, 2024, to October 1, 2025, with zero violations. It reported no DSO violations, no jail-removal violations, proper sight-and-sound separation by facility design and policy, and no "Scared Straight" program participation for youth under public authority. These inspection facts should be read as oversight findings and corrective actions, not as a claim that every current jail condition is unchanged.

Programs and Daily Custody

County material describes several local services inside the Wadena County Detention Facility. The jail employs full-time and part-time corrections officers and has a Jail Administrator. A Public Health Nurse visits the center three times a week. Volunteers provide Alcoholics Anonymous and religious services. Staff training is described as ongoing and tied to Minnesota Department of Corrections rules and regulations. Those details fit the facility's role as a small county jail that handles both short custody and local sentence needs.

Booking and intake include the core steps required by Minnesota jail standards: identifying charges, searching the inmate and possessions, inventorying property, medical and mental-health screening, photographing and fingerprinting, identifying-data interview, initial classification, housing assignment, and internal booking-number assignment. Wadena's public roster did not show housing unit, DOB, race, sex, height, weight, or booking number in the inspected text, so those details should not be expected on the public report even if the jail maintains them internally.