Saline County, Arkansas — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Saline County Detention Center

Operated bySaline County Sheriff's Office
Detention administratorCaptain Harley Sowell, Detention Administrator (a sheriff's office captain, not a separate department)
Jail address735 S. Neeley, Benton, AR 72015 (mailing address for detainees); detention line (501) 303-5642
Beds / daily populationNot published on any page opened
Budget2024 budget, Appropriation Ordinance No. 2023-30: 'Appropriated from the Jail Fund (3017) ... Jail $ 4,658,312.32'; 'Jail Anticipated Revenue $ 5,191,880.56'; department 0418 County Jail shows 47 positions
VisitationVideo only through CityTelecoin, seven days a week 8:00am-10:00pm; 'no face to face visitation'; no rates published
CommissaryThrough citytelecoin.com, by lobby kiosk (cash or card) or online; no prices published
Paying bondsBonds, fines, fees and restitution paid at the Sheriff's Office, 735 S. Neeley St., 8:00am-4:00pm Monday-Friday, by cash, money order or cashier's check for the exact amount, payable to SCSO; no personal checks or cards
RosterThe county's inmate-roster page links a live roster on inmates.salinecoar.revize.com, which could not be opened
What was triedsalinecounty.org sheriff, inmate roster, detention center, commissary/mail, visitation, fines and fees, command staff, government index, county judge, justices of the peace, quorum court agendas and budgets pages were opened, and the 2024 budget PDF. The August 2026 quorum court and September 2026 committee agenda packets were opened but returned no machine-readable text. inmates.salinecoar.revize.com was refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED) and not retried. Commercial lookup sites (arkansascourtconnect.org, arkansasprisons.org, salinerecords.us, cleburnecountysheriff.com, arkansassheriffsassociation.com, arkansasinmateroster.org) were not opened or cited.
Arkansas Sheriffs' Association directoryHolds: Male & Female; capacity 250; jail phone (501) 303-5642. Checked 18 September 2026; an association directory, not a county source - https://arsheriffs.org/sheriffs/saline-county-sheriff/

Source: Saline County, AR - Detention Center · checked 2026-09-18

Transparency rating

3/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✓What it costs taxpayers
✗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
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Saline County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-18. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byCounty Jail Fund (3017); the 2024 budget ordinance appropriates $4,658,312.32 from it against anticipated jail revenue of $5,191,880.56. No jail sales tax was identified on the pages opened.
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Rodney Wright

Runs the jailYes - the Detention Center is a division of the Saline County Sheriff's Office
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
Command staffChief Deputy Dustin Robertson; Detention Center Captain Harley Sowell
Office address735 South Neeley St., Benton, AR 72015; admin (501) 303-5609
Arkansas Sheriffs' Association directoryLists Rodney Wright ('Elected in 2015'); office 735 S. Neeley St., Benton, AR 72015, phone (501 )303-5609. Checked 18 September 2026; an association directory, not a county source - https://arsheriffs.org/sheriffs/saline-county-sheriff/

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Saline County, AR - Sheriff's Office · 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.

Still needed

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 judgeMatthew Brumley — 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 →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

The budget check is met by the county's own 2024 budget ordinance (No. 2023-30), linked from salinecounty.org's budgets page and served from the county's CMS host (cms2.revize.com/revize/salinecountyar); it carries a Jail Fund appropriation and a County Jail department.
The bond_info check is met by the sheriff's Fines & Fees page, which says where, when and how bonds can be paid.
The roster check is recorded as no because the live roster sits on a vendor-hosted subdomain that was refused and so could not be verified; the county does link one, and it may well be live.
CityTelecoin handles video visitation and commissary, but no rates are published, so fees is no.
The August 2026 quorum court and September 2026 committee agenda packets returned no machine-readable text, so they could not be searched for a detention facility review committee report; older packets were not opened. inspections is recorded as no on that basis.
Saline County, Missouri was researched last session; every page used here names Benton, Arkansas.
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 Matt Brumley is the county's chief executive and presides over the Quorum Court with veto power. Quorum Court justices of the peace, as listed by the county: District 1 Pat Bisbee, 2 Wilson Hatcher, 3 Carlton Billingsley, 4 Keith Kellum, 5 VACANT, 6 Rick Bellinger, 7 Josh Curtis, 8 Ed Albares, 9 CJ Engel, 10 Jim Whitley, 11 Clint Chism, 12 Stephanie Johnson, 13 Karen Crowson. Agenda packets and meeting video are posted; budgets for 2020-2026 are posted by the Finance & HR Department.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Saline 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