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
- What was triedThe search returned the sheriff's own site, seviersheriffar.org (home page and /inmateSearch); both fetches were refused by the site's robots.txt. seviercountyar.gov failed (robots.txt returned HTTP 503) and seviercounty.arkansas.gov did not resolve. Every other search result was a commercial inmate-lookup site and was not used. www.seviercountyar.org, named by the Association of Arkansas Counties, was refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED).
- Arkansas Sheriffs' Association directoryHolds: Male & Female; capacity 74; jail phone (870) 642-2125; jail administrator Chris Wolcott. Checked 18 September 2026; an association directory, not a county source - https://arsheriffs.org/sheriffs/sevier-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 Robert Gentry
- Runs the jailUnder A.C.A. § 12-41-502 the elected sheriff has the custody, rule and charge of the county jail; the sheriff's own site could not be read to confirm the jail
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff, four-year term
- Source caveatNamed only by the Association of Arkansas Counties county directory (phone (870) 642-2125); the sheriff's own site refused every fetch, so the name is not confirmed from a first-party page
- Arkansas Sheriffs' Association directoryLists Robert Gentry ('Elected in 2017'); office 137 West Robinson Rd, Dequeen, AR 71832, phone (870) 642-2125. Checked 18 September 2026; an association directory, not a county source - https://arsheriffs.org/sheriffs/sevier-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 - Sevier County · 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 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 judgeSandra Dunn — 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
- 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.
- Not examined: the sheriff's own site (seviersheriffar.org) refused every automated fetch under robots.txt, and no county government site could be reached. The checks are left empty because nobody could examine the county's publishing; this is not a finding that the county publishes nothing.
- The county seat (spelled DeQueen by the AAC), the sheriff's name and the county judge's name come from the Association of Arkansas Counties directory, a secondary source; none was confirmed on a county-run page.
- Arkansas form: an elected county judge (the county's chief executive, not a judicial officer) and a quorum court. The Association of Arkansas Counties lists County Judge Sandra Dunn, (870) 642-2425, 115 N. Third St., De Queen. The AAC names www.seviercountyar.org as the county website, but a fetch of it was refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED), so no quorum court members are recorded.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Sevier 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