The Detention Center
Pope County Detention Center
- Operated byPope County Sheriff's Office
- Named on county site'Pope County Sheriff's Office and Detention Center' on the county's sheriff page
- Jail addressNot found - the county page gives the sheriff's office address, #3 Emergency Lane, Russellville; it does not give a separate jail address
- Beds / daily populationNot published on any page that could be opened
- What was triedpopecountyar.gov sheriff, county-judge and circuit-court-judges pages were opened. The sheriff's own site popecoso.org (home, /roster.php, /inmates) appeared in search but every fetch was refused by robots.txt, so its roster and inmate pages could not be read and are not counted. Commercial lookup sites in the results (popecountyjailar.org, arkansasprisonroster.org, arkansassheriffsassociation.com, cleburnecountysheriff.com, thepublicindex.org, arkansascourtrecords.us) were not opened or cited.
- Arkansas Sheriffs' Association directoryHolds: Male & Female; capacity 173; jail phone (479) 968-5599; jail administrator Capt. Rowdy Sweet. Checked 18 September 2026; an association directory, not a county source - https://arsheriffs.org/sheriffs/pope-county-sheriff/
Source: Pope County, Arkansas - Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✗How to post bond — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
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 Blake Wilson
- Runs the jailYes - the county's sheriff page refers to the 'Pope County Sheriff's Office and Detention Center' and to its work in corrections
- 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
- Office address#3 Emergency Lane, Russellville, AR 72802
- Phone(479) 968-2558
- Sheriff's own sitepopecoso.org - linked from the county page, but it refused automated reading (robots.txt)
- Arkansas Sheriffs' Association directoryLists Blake Wilson; office #3 Emergency Ln., Russellville, AR 72802, phone (479) 968-2558. Checked 18 September 2026; an association directory, not a county source - https://arsheriffs.org/sheriffs/pope-county-sheriff/
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Pope County, Arkansas - Sheriff · 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. The county's own circuit-judges page names the 5th Judicial District (Pope, Johnson and Franklin Counties) and four division judges. It does not say which judicial officer sets bail at first appearance.
Circuit Court, 5th Judicial District (Pope, Johnson and Franklin Counties) - Division I
- James Dunham
Circuit Court, 5th Judicial District - Division II
- Gordon W. "Mack" McCain, Jr.
Circuit Court, 5th Judicial District - Division III
- Ken D. Coker, Jr.
Circuit Court, 5th Judicial District - Division IV
- Jack Patterson
- 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 judgeBen Cross — 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
- The county's sheriff page names the Pope County Detention Center as part of the sheriff's office, so the named check is met.
- The sheriff's own domain, popecoso.org, appears to carry a roster (/roster.php) and an inmates page, but every fetch was refused by robots.txt. The roster check is therefore recorded as no because it could not be verified, not because it was confirmed absent; it may well exist.
- No quorum court minutes, agenda packets or budget were linked from the county pages that were opened, so no inspection report could be looked for there.
- 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 Ben Cross is the county's chief executive and, per the county page, presides at meetings of the Pope County Quorum Court. The page does not name the quorum court's justices of the peace and links no minutes, agendas or budget.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Pope 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