Compare Iowa sheriff department costs

Sheriff department cost and staffing across all 99 counties. Click a column header to sort. Hover a column header to see what it measures. Data as of 2026-08-12.

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County Population Budget $/resident Sworn / 100k res Custody / 100k res Beds / 100k res
Adair County 7,479
Adams County 3,680
Allamakee County 14,046
Appanoose County 12,279
Audubon County 5,651
Benton County 25,652
Black Hawk County 131,041
Boone County 26,700
Bremer County 25,012
Buchanan County 20,631
Buena Vista County 20,687
Butler County 14,376
Calhoun County 9,893
Carroll County 20,728
Cass County 13,116
Cedar County 18,479
Cerro Gordo County 42,979
Cherokee County 11,601
Chickasaw County 11,957
Clarke County 9,737
Clay County 16,423
Clayton County 17,123
Clinton County 46,488
Crawford County 16,450
Dallas County 100,367
Davis County 9,093
Decatur County 7,684
Delaware County 17,523
Des Moines County 38,824
Dickinson County 17,692
Dubuque County 98,812
Emmet County 9,349
Fayette County 19,519
Floyd County 15,601
Franklin County 10,015
Fremont County 6,639
Greene County 8,801
Grundy County 12,351
Guthrie County 10,619
Hamilton County 14,979
Hancock County 10,790
Hardin County 16,861
Harrison County 14,623
Henry County 20,436
Howard County 9,479
Humboldt County 9,606
Ida County 6,969
Iowa County 16,575
Jackson County 19,470
Jasper County 37,808
Jefferson County 15,785
Johnson County 153,360
Jones County 20,733
Keokuk County 10,026
Kossuth County 14,718
Lee County 33,442
Linn County 229,308
Louisa County 10,823
Lucas County 8,666
Lyon County 12,023
Madison County 16,609
Mahaska County 22,059
Marion County 33,487
Marshall County 40,049
Mills County 14,605
Mitchell County 10,537
Monona County 8,671
Monroe County 7,574
Montgomery County 10,285
Muscatine County 42,968
O'Brien County 14,138
Osceola County 6,149
Page County 15,225
Palo Alto County 8,938
Plymouth County 25,621
Pocahontas County 7,061
Polk County 493,378
Pottawattamie County 93,543
Poweshiek County 18,608
Ringgold County 4,690
Sac County 9,778
Scott County 174,315
Shelby County 11,737
Sioux County 35,815
Story County 98,573
Tama County 17,017
Taylor County 5,916
Union County 12,107
Van Buren County 7,207
Wapello County 35,292
Warren County 52,709
Washington County 22,534
Wayne County 6,484
Webster County 36,986
Winnebago County 10,704
Winneshiek County 20,050
Woodbury County 105,526
Worth County 7,417
Wright County 12,897

A note on data vintages and definitions. Population is the US Census Bureau's 2018-2022 American Community Survey 5-year estimate. Sheriff staffing is not currently loaded for Iowa, so the staffing columns show a dash throughout this table. They previously carried the US Census Bureau's Census of Governments Employment 2022 figure, which counts a county government's police protection and corrections employment by function code rather than by agency. That total includes the county probation department, the coroner and the crime lab, and it excludes the sheriff's own court services staff, so it does not describe a sheriff's office. Staffing will return here when a county-published figure is loaded. County jail data has not yet been loaded for Iowa; the state's county jails are inspected annually by the Iowa Department of Corrections' Chief Jail Inspector under Iowa Code § 356.43, with standards codified at Iowa Admin. Code 201, Title IV, ch. 50 (Jail Facilities), but no downloadable per-facility dataset from that program has been located. Sheriff department budget data has not yet been loaded for Iowa. Iowa Code ch. 69 lets a county's first deputy serve as sheriff between a mid-term vacancy and the appointment of a successor, so a name in the table can reflect a currently serving appointee rather than the last directly elected incumbent. Sheriff names were collected from the Iowa State Sheriffs' & Deputies' Association 2025 Sheriff Directory (dated April 4, 2025) and machine-verified against county sources in July 2026; all 99 counties are named.