Clicking on any of the South Dakota Counties or Cities below will direct you to a list of all the City Jails, County Jails and Juvenile Detention Centers in that specific County.
South Dakota has 66 counties, and most of them do not run a jail. The sheriff runs one where the county still has it. Minnehaha in Sioux Falls and Pennington in Rapid City are the buildings most families are looking for. Brown in Aberdeen, Codington in Watertown, and Davison in Mitchell cover a lot of the rest. A county west of the river often books into a neighbor, because the next town with a jail can be an hour away. City police have a holding room. That is not a county jail.
A year or less stays with the sheriff. A felony sentence goes to the Department of Corrections, which does not always mean a bed in Sioux Falls. A federal sentence goes to the Bureau of Prisons. FCI Sandstone is in Minnesota, and South Dakota has no large federal prison of its own. When a jail holds somebody for another county, for the state, or for the Marshals, it bills a daily rate.
Jails in South Dakota are the pretrial and short-sentence buildings. In fiscal 2025 the department averaged 3,899 adults in prison. Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield held 1,204, about a third of the count. The State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls held 768. Jameson Annex, on the same campus, held 506. The women’s prison is in Pierre. A new Rapid City prison, about 300 beds, and a 1,500-bed replacement in Sioux Falls are on the books. Those are not county jails.
About two dozen jails serve 66 counties. The rest contract. Minnehaha and Pennington account for a large share of the beds. A full jail in the west means a long transfer across open country.
Only a few counties run a secure juvenile detention center. Minnehaha and Pennington are the two that matter. Everybody else contracts. A youth in one of those centers is usually waiting on a hearing.
The state youth count is small. In fiscal 2025 the department averaged 165 juvenile offenders in its jurisdictional numbers. South Dakota closed its old state training school years ago and still places some youth in programs in other states. Search the county of the arrest. The adult listing is that county’s jail, or the jail it contracts with. The youth listing is the detention center that county uses.
In Sioux Falls the first day is a booking floor. Name, prints, a medical screen, a search, clothes in a bag, one call if the phones are working. The person has not been convicted. There is no phone in the cell, and no way to know if the job, the truck, or the kids got covered. Glasses stay in property until somebody signs for them. In a west-river jail the same steps happen in a smaller room.
January is the hard month. The holding cell is cold, the uniform does not fit, and the bunk is thin. The next bed is awake. Meals are plain and on a clock. Mail is slow. A visit from Pierre to Sioux Falls is a drive that may not happen. Withdrawal from alcohol or methamphetamine can start before the first appearance, and the night is when that gets loud. Deputies who apply the rules the same way to everybody run a quieter pod. Uneven rules are how contraband moves. Minnehaha and Pennington can separate by risk. A 12-bed jail on the prairie often cannot, and a full jail there means a transfer.
Larger South Dakota jails sell tablet time, video visits, and deposits through a vendor. A small jail may still be a phone account and a visit through glass. Those privileges can be shut off. Each county page on this site lists the jail phone, the vendor, and the way to send money for that sheriff’s office.