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
- JailCommercial lookup sites refer to a Polk County Detention Center in Arkansas, but no county or sheriff page confirming it could be opened, so it is not recorded
- Where prisoners goNot found
- What was triedOne WebSearch ('Polk County Arkansas sheriff jail detention roster quorum court official website') returned only commercial or unrelated results: polkcountydetentionar.org, jailexchange.com, arkansasprisonroster.org, arkansassheriffsassociation.com (a lookup site, not the Arkansas Sheriffs' Association), islandcounty.net, thepublicindex.org, govbackgroundchecks.com and two jhu.edu spam pages. None was opened or cited. No first-party URL was available to fetch. A second (spare) search ('Polk County Arkansas Mena sheriff's office county judge quorum court detention center') returned Wikipedia, the Association of Arkansas Counties directory page (opened), countyservices.azurewebsites.net (not opened) and more commercial lookup sites (arkansascountyjails.org, arkansasinmates.org, arkansassheriffsassociation.com, thepublicindex.org), none opened or cited. Still no county government or sheriff domain was found.
- Arkansas Sheriffs' Association directoryHolds: Male & Female; capacity 24; jail phone (479) 394-2511; jail administrator Craig Mohr. Checked 18 September 2026; an association directory, not a county source - https://arsheriffs.org/sheriffs/polk-county-sheriff/
Source: Association of Arkansas Counties - Polk · 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 Scott Sawyer
- Runs the jailNot established from a first-party page - no Polk County, Arkansas government or sheriff site was found
- 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 shall have the custody, rule, and charge of the jail within the county and all prisoners committed in the county
- Source caveatName taken from the Association of Arkansas Counties' county directory page (undated), not from a county page; it should be re-confirmed from a county source
- Phone(479) 394-2511 (per the AAC directory)
- Arkansas Sheriffs' Association directoryLists Scott Sawyer ('Elected in 2017'); office 507 Church Ave., Mena, AR 71953, phone (479) 394-2511. Checked 18 September 2026; an association directory, not a county source - https://arsheriffs.org/sheriffs/polk-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 - Polk · 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 or judge 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 judgeBrandon Ellison — 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 courtQuorum court page →
Notes on the record
- Unexamined county: two searches for Polk County, Arkansas returned no first-party county or sheriff URL, so neither the county's own site nor a sheriff's site was opened. audit.checks is left empty rather than scored as ten no entries.
- The seat, sheriff, county judge and justices of the peace come from the Association of Arkansas Counties' directory page, a statewide association rather than the county publishing; none of it satisfies a transparency check, and the officeholders should be re-confirmed from a county source. No jail name or jail location was published there.
- Search results were dominated by commercial inmate-lookup farms, including one domain styled as the Arkansas Sheriffs' Association; none is cited or counted. Polk County, Missouri was researched last session and nothing from it is used here.
- 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.
- Arkansas form: County Judge Brandon Ellison, (479) 394-8132, is the county's chief executive; justices of the peace listed: Chris Daniel, Jeremy Jones, Levi Ellison, James Looney, Troy Lunsford, Tommy Floyd, Tawana Gilbert, Terry Scott, Mitchell Tidwell. All from the Association of Arkansas Counties directory (undated), not a county page; courthouse address 507 Church Ave., Mena 71953. No minutes or budget were found.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Polk 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