The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byAdair County Sheriff's Office
- Jail named on county siteNo — the sheriff's page does not give the jail a published name
- Jail-related pages listed in site navigationJail Commissary, Jail Visitation, Inmate Mail & Telephone — linked from the sheriff's page but every attempt to open them was refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED)
- What was triedOpened https://adaircountymissouri.com/departments/sheriff/ ; attempts to open the county's jail-commissary and county-budget pages were refused
Source: Adair County Missouri Government — Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
0/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗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 Jason Lene
- Runs the jailYes — RSMo 221.020 makes the sheriff of each Missouri county the keeper of the county jail
- Office address215 N. Franklin St, Kirksville, MO 63501
- How the office is filledElected county officer
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Adair County Missouri Government — Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Adair County is not one of the six Missouri jurisdictions (Clay, Greene, Jackson, Platte, St. Louis County, St. Louis City) where the 1940 Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan reaches the trial bench, so its circuit and associate circuit judges are elected on a partisan ballot. They are state judicial officers, not county officials. No court page was opened for this county, so no judge is named here.
- 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 Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
- The boardBoard of County Commissioners
Notes on the record
- Only one page on the county's own domain could be opened: the Sheriff's page at adaircountymissouri.com. It names Sheriff Jason Lene and the office address in Kirksville but publishes no jail name, roster, capacity, budget, fee schedule or bond guidance, so all ten checks are recorded 'no'.
- The county site's navigation does list jail commissary, jail visitation, inmate mail/telephone, county budget, commissioners' agenda and commissioners' minutes pages; those pages were refused by the fetch tool and are therefore not cited and not scored as passing.
- No Missouri state agency inspects county jails. The Department of Corrections inspects state prisons under RSMo chapter 217; that authority does not reach chapter 221 county jails. The only statutory mechanisms are local and lay — grand jury visits under RSMo 221.300 and a county board of visitors under RSMo 221.320–221.350, which 221.350 requires to report yearly to the county. No such report was found published by Adair County.
- Missouri has no death-in-custody reporting law and no public dataset; RSMo 58.451 requires only that the coroner be notified of a death in custody. Nothing on the page opened records a death in Adair County custody.
- Missouri's Sunshine Law, RSMo 610.023, requires a public-records request to be acted upon no later than the end of the third business day after receipt.
- Missouri county jails are funded by the county — RSMo 221.080 puts jail expense on the county commission.
- Adair County is governed by a three-member County Commission. The county's own site lists Commission, County Budget, Commissioners' Agenda, Commissioners' Minutes and Commissioners' Notices pages under adaircountymissouri.com/departments/commission/, but every attempt to open them was refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED), so no commissioner is named and no budget or minutes document was read.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Adair 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 commissioners who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-09-18 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered