The Detention Center
Not scored. The county's own website was not reachable in the session that produced this record, so its disclosures were never examined. This is a gap in the research, not a finding about the county.
- Operated byNot found
- JailNot confirmed from a page that could be opened
- What was trieddrewcountysheriff.com/jail and drewcountysheriff.com/inmatesFeed were returned by search but refused by robots.txt (ROBOTS_DISALLOWED) and were not retried. No Drew County government domain appeared in the search; the rest of the results were commercial inmate-lookup sites (drewcountyjail.org, drewcountyarrests.org, arkansassheriffsassociation.com, arkansasprisonroster.org, arkansasjailroster.com, arkansasinmates.org, thepublicindex.org), none of which is cited or counted
- Arkansas Sheriffs' Association directoryCapacity 42; jail phone (870) 460-6215; jail administrator Courtney Hale. Checked 18 September 2026; an association directory, not a county source - https://arsheriffs.org/sheriffs/drew-county-sheriff/
Source: · checked 2026-09-18
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Tim Nichols
- Runs the jailBy statute the elected sheriff has custody of the county jail; no Drew County page could be opened to confirm the operation
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff, four-year term (Ark. Const. art. 7, § 46; Amendment 95)
- Statutory basisA.C.A. § 12-41-502: the county sheriff has the custody, rule and charge of the jail within the county and all prisoners committed in the county.
- Source of the nameName from the Association of Arkansas Counties directory, not a county page; checked 18 September 2026
- Office phone (directory)(870) 367-6211
- Arkansas Sheriffs' Association directoryLists Tim Nichols ('Elected in 2023'); office 210 South Main Street, Monticello, AR 71655, phone (870) 367-6211. Checked 18 September 2026; an association directory, not a county source - https://arsheriffs.org/sheriffs/drew-county-sheriff/
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Association of Arkansas Counties — Drew County page (statewide directory, checked 18 September 2026) · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Arkansas circuit judges are elected on a nonpartisan ballot to six-year terms; the governor fills a mid-term vacancy by appointment until the next general election. They are state judicial officers, not county officials. Under Ark. R. Crim. P. 8.1 an arrested person goes before a judicial officer without unnecessary delay; depending on the court, that may be a circuit judge or a magistrate. Arkansas's "county judge" is the county's chief executive, not a judicial officer, and does not set bail. No circuit number was confirmed from a page that could be opened.
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-18
The County Judge and Quorum Court
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- County judgeJessie Griffin — the county’s chief executive, not a judicial officer; named in the Association of Arkansas Counties directory, checked 2026-09-18
- What they controlThe county judge and quorum court fund and build the jail: the detention budget, the building itself, and any dedicated jail sales tax.
- What they don'tCustody of the jail. Under A.C.A. § 12-41-502 the elected sheriff has “the custody, rule, and charge” of the jail and its prisoners.
- The quorum courtNo quorum court page was found on the county's own site
Notes on the record
- Unexamined county: the sheriff's own site (drewcountysheriff.com) refused every automated attempt under robots.txt, and no Drew County government domain was found. The checks are therefore left empty rather than scored as ten no's.
- The search results show the sheriff's site has a Jail page and an Inmates Feed page, but neither could be read, so neither is counted.
- Search results were dominated by commercial inmate-lookup sites styled to look official, including one named for the Arkansas Sheriffs' Association; none is cited or counted.
- Arkansas law requires each county jail to be inspected at least annually by a governor-appointed district criminal detention facility review committee (A.C.A. § 12-26-107), against mandatory state minimum standards. The written report goes to the district's administrative judge and to the county judge; state law does not require it to be published, and no public state repository of the reports was located.
- A.C.A. § 12-12-315 requires anyone with knowledge of a death in jail custody to notify the county coroner, the prosecuting attorney and the sheriff; it is a notification duty to officials, not a public-reporting law, and no public Arkansas list or dataset of jail deaths was located.
- County seat from CCCarto's Arkansas county-seat list (https://www.cccarto.com/countyseats/arkansas/), checked 18 September 2026; it names ten two-seat counties, including Franklin (Ozark and Charleston).
- Arkansas form: an elected County Judge as chief executive and a Quorum Court as the legislative body. No Drew County government site was found, so no county judge, justice of the peace, minutes or budget is recorded.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Drew County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the justices of the peace on the quorum court who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-09-18 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered