Search Rice County Jail Inmates

Rice County Jail Overview

The official Rice County Jail page identifies the jail as the county's 76-bed facility at the Rice County Public Safety Center in Faribault. The jail is operated by the Rice County Sheriff's Office, led by Sheriff Jesse Thomas, and serves as the main local detention point for people arrested in Rice County. It holds pretrial detainees waiting for court, sentenced local inmates, short juvenile holds under state approval, and people held pending transfer to another custody system. The jail page lists Jail Administrator Stephanie Duhme and gives the jail phone as 507-332-6021.

The Public Safety Center jail opened in November 2024. That matters for records and visitation because older county PDFs may still refer to the former Law Enforcement Center, the Jail Annex, or the older downtown address. The current Rice County Jail page and the 2025 Minnesota DOC inspection place the active jail at 50 East View Drive, Faribault. The jail is a secure coed local adult detention facility under Minnesota jail standards, not a state prison. Once a person is sentenced to state prison and transferred to the Minnesota Department of Corrections, the county jail roster is no longer the right lookup channel.

The county's Public Safety Center project background is shown on the Rice County construction project page.

The project page helps explain why the new Rice County Jail replaced a split older jail and annex arrangement.

Rice County Jail Capacity

The strongest sourced capacity figures come from the Minnesota Department of Corrections 2025 Rice County Jail inspection. That inspection identifies the jail as a local adult detention facility, lists the address as 50 E View Drive, and records the inspection date as March 13, 2025. The inspection approved 76 secure coed beds, calculated operational capacity at 68.40 beds, commonly rounded to 68, and listed a designed capacity of 90 beds. The effective date for the approved bed count was October 29, 2024.

Historical county materials show why the current capacity is a major change. The 2019 facility assessment RFP described an older 36-bed main jail and a 37-bed minimum-security annex. That same county material reported 1,574 bookings in 2018, an average daily population of 50 in 2018, and a projected 2019 average daily population of 52. It also said Rice County used Steele, Le Sueur, and Goodhue county jails for overflow. Current official sources did not provide a 2026 average daily population for the new jail, so the public roster should be treated as a current custody list, not as an annual population report.

Rice County Jail Roster Lookup

The correct online lookup for this facility is the Rice County Sheriff's Office Inmate Roster, linked from the county jail page as the Rice County Jail List. It is free and no login was documented in the research. The roster is a county jail list, so it is meant for current local custody. It does not replace Minnesota Court Records Online for filed court cases, the Minnesota DOC public viewer for sentenced prison custody, or federal and immigration locators for those separate systems.

1. Open the Rice County Jail List from the county jail page or go directly to the sheriff's roster.
2. Read the roster timestamp first so the age of the public custody list is clear.
3. Use the Filter by Name field and type part of the last name, starting broad if the spelling is uncertain.
4. Review each row for the front mugshot, inmate name, booked date, and charge text.
5. If no match appears, call Rice County Jail at 507-332-6021 or check the Minnesota DOC public viewer after a prison sentence.

The roster inspected in the research displayed the headings Front Mugshot, Inmate, Booked, and Charges. It did not show bond, housing unit, booking number, court date, or release date in the accessible row text. For more detail about current custody records, the broader Rice County jail inmate records resource gives the roster fields and fallback channels.

The roster itself is visible in the matched capture from the Rice County inmate roster source.

The screenshot shows why the roster is useful for current Rice County Jail custody but limited for deeper court or release questions.

Rice County Jail Contact

Use the jail contact line for current custody, visiting questions, and instructions that may have changed since older PDF rules were published. The Sheriff's Office administration page also lists Sheriff Jesse Thomas, general contacts, and records contacts at the Public Safety Center. Records Staff can help explain how to request public law-enforcement data when a booking record, report, or mugshot is not available online. Dispatch should not be used as a shortcut for routine records questions unless the matter is urgent or after-hours verification is needed.

Rice County Jail Visiting

The official Rice County Jail page lists daily visiting hours from 8-11 a.m., 3-5 p.m., and 7-9 p.m. The jail visiting rules PDF adds several rules that should be treated as current unless the jail says otherwise, while also noting that some location references may come from the older Annex and Law Enforcement Center arrangement. Visitors may be searched. Visits are recorded and monitored. A visitor must register 30 minutes before the end of the visiting period, and a visit is normally limited to 20 minutes. Attorneys, probation officers, and clergy may visit at reasonable times and are exempt from the 20-minute limit.

Visitor count rules from the PDF limit visits to two adults and one child, or one adult and two children, at one time. Visitors must be at least 18, except that a child may visit a parent when accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. Banned items include phones, cameras, recording devices, food, beverages, alcohol, narcotics, controlled substances, firearms, and explosives. Lockdown or an emergency can cancel visiting without advance notice.

Rice County Jail Mail and Money

Official mail, commissary, phone, and deposit details for Rice County Jail are thin in the available sources. The visiting rules PDF says money for detainees may be deposited using a kiosk in the visiting area of the Annex or the lower lobby of the Law Enforcement Center, and that detainee money is not released to visitors. Because the jail opened at the Public Safety Center in November 2024, those older kiosk location references should be verified with the current jail before a visit or deposit.

Do not send cash or packages unless jail staff confirms the current rule. The public roster proves current custody, but it does not publish a full commissary rule sheet. Family members should ask about accepted names, booking identifiers, lobby deposit hours, and refund rules before sending funds.

Rice County Jail Booking

Rice County does not publish a full booking manual, so the clearest intake picture comes from the roster, the jail rules, and Minnesota law. After a local arrest, a person is brought to Rice County Jail for intake. Booking may include identity checks, property inventory, a search, a booking photo, fingerprints, medical or mental-health screening, charge or hold entry, and classification. Classification is the jail process used to assign custody level and housing. Medical, mental-health, security-sensitive, and private detention data are not the same as public roster data.

Minnesota Statutes section 641.05 requires the sheriff to keep a permanent jail commitment record. Public law-enforcement data rules under Minnesota Statutes section 13.82 also explain why arrest data and booking photographs may be public while other details stay restricted. If a person cannot be found on the Rice County Jail roster, several explanations are possible: intake may not be complete, the person may have been released, the person may have been transferred to another county, the case may have moved into state prison custody, or a federal or immigration hold may involve a different locator.

About Rice County Jail

The current Rice County Jail is part of the county's Public Safety Center project. County materials say a task force recommended a new jail and Public Safety Center after the county studied the older jail, the annex, and a possible Steele County partnership. In July 2021 the County Board chose to build its own jail, citing local control and cost. The older jail arrangement included a 36-bed main jail and a 37-bed minimum-security annex that had been moved to a former Army Reserve site. County materials also described out-of-county housing and transport costs as a major concern before the new jail opened.

The new jail does not erase the need to check the right record system. Current Rice County Jail inmates are searched through the county roster. Court charges after arrest are searched in Minnesota Court Records Online. Sentenced state prisoners are searched through the Minnesota Department of Corrections public viewer. Federal and immigration custody use separate BOP and ICE systems. VINELink can be used for custody status notifications, but it should not replace direct verification with the office that controls the record.