What this is, and what it isn’t

Booked / in custody. Charges are allegations; everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The Custody Ledger republishes the Isanti County Jail’s public in-custody roster in a form that’s easier to read: searchable, grouped into plain-language charge categories, with each Minnesota statute explained and linked to its official text. It is an independent community project. It is not affiliated with Isanti County, the Sheriff’s Office, or the Minnesota Judicial Branch.

Presumption of innocence

A booking is a record that someone was arrested or is being held — for a new allegation, a warrant, a probation matter, a hold for another agency, or a sentence. It is not a finding of guilt. Charges listed at booking are allegations made by law enforcement; prosecutors may file different charges or none, and many cases are reduced or dismissed. Everyone listed is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.

Where the data comes from

The Sheriff’s Office publishes its roster on the county’s In-Custody page, which embeds a report generated by the jail’s records system at jailweb.co.isanti.mn.us/custody.html. We read that same public page. We show only what it publishes:

• name, sex and age;
• booking number and the county’s master name index (MNI) number;
• intake (booking) date and time;
• each charge’s level (felony, gross misdemeanor, misdemeanor), status, statute and description;
• a booking photo, which we reproduce in a newsprint halftone (the original is one tap away on each entry page).

The county roster does not include bail amounts, the arresting or holding agency, court dates or release dates, so neither do we. Charge descriptions appear exactly as the county publishes them, including its truncations. Our category groupings and plain-English explanations are simplified summaries, not legal advice.

When it updates

We check the county roster automatically every morning at about 6 a.m. Central, and again whenever someone visits and our copy is more than 4 hours old — at most a handful of requests a day, identified with a descriptive user-agent. Every page shows when the county generated its report and when we last checked. The last check was Sep 30, 4:40 p.m. CT; the county’s report was stamped Sep 30, 3:45 p.m. CT.

If we can’t reach the county for more than 30 hours, we hide the roster rather than risk showing people who have since been released.

No archive

When a person leaves the county’s roster, they disappear from this site at the next update (at least once a day). Their page stops existing. We don’t keep a history of who was booked, and entry pages ask search engines not to index or cache them. The only thing we keep over time is anonymous counts — how many bookings per day and in which charge categories — shown on the Trends page.

We don’t rank people, label anyone, or host comments. Booking photos are served through this site (so your browser doesn’t contact the county), fetched once per booking, and deleted from our storage at the same update that removes the person; search engines are asked not to index them. Photos are never used in share images. A shared entry previews as a text card (name, age, booking date, listed charges and “Charges are allegations. Presumed innocent.”), which stops existing when the person leaves the roster.

Visitor privacy

We count anonymous page views; no cookies or tracking. The site uses Vercel Web Analytics, which is cookieless and doesn’t identify or follow individual visitors — it tells us only how many times pages are viewed, and from what kind of device and country.

Court records

Each entry has a button that opens Minnesota Court Records Online (MCRO), the Judicial Branch’s official case search, and copies the person’s name so you can paste it in. MCRO doesn’t support pre-filled search links, and its terms don’t allow bulk copying, so we don’t reproduce any court data here. A name match on MCRO may be a different person — check identifying details before drawing any conclusion.

Corrections & removal requests

If something here is wrong — for example, you were released but still appear, or a detail doesn’t match the county’s roster — email isanticustodyledger@gmail.com. Please include the booking number from the entry. We’ll check it against the county’s current list and correct or remove it promptly. Because we copy the county’s list, errors in the underlying record need to be corrected by the Isanti County Sheriff’s Office (the jail’s listed phone number is 763-689-3859; the Sheriff’s Office main line is 763-689-2141).