The Detention Center
Boone County Jail
- Operated byBoone County Sheriff's Office
- Address2121 County Dr., Columbia, MO 65202
- Phone(573) 875-1111
- Jail AdministratorCaptain Jenny Atwell (the elected sheriff remains the statutory jailer under RSMo 221.020, so jail_administrator is left null)
- Shift lieutenants namedLieutenant Christie McCaleb (Squads 1 and 3); Lieutenant George Gresham (Squads 2 and 4)
- Detainees in custody422 - the county's own live Current Detainees roster reported 'Detainee Count: 422' and '422 Total Items' on the run date it printed, 09/07/26
- Beds / rated capacityNot found - the county publishes a live head count but no rated bed capacity on any page opened
- Bond / bail guidanceNot found on any page opened
- Inmate phone, video visit and commissary ratesNot found on any page opened
- Holds for other agenciesNot found - no contract or per-diem boarding rate published
- What was triedOpened https://www.boonemo.gov/sheriff/ , https://www.boonemo.gov/sheriff//jail/ and the live roster at https://report.boonemo.gov/mrcjava/servlet/RMS01_MP.I00030s . The jail page also links a Custody Operations page (/sheriff/jail/operations.asp), a Programs and Support Services page (/sheriff/jail/programs-services.asp) and a second live report, the 07:00 Report (report.boonemo.gov/mrcjava/servlet/RMS01_MP.I00090s); all three were refused to this agent and none was opened, so nothing from them is claimed.
Source: Boone County Sheriff's Office - General Jail Information · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗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 Dwayne Carey
- Runs the jailYes - RSMo 221.020 gives the sheriff custody, rule, keeping and charge of the county jail and of all prisoners in it. The Boone County Sheriff's Office describes itself as three branches: Jail (Detention), Enforcement and Services
- How the office is filledElected county-wide. Boone County is not one of the Missouri jurisdictions carved out of the elected-sheriff rule
- Office address2121 County Dr., Columbia, MO 65202
- Phone / fax / email(573) 875-1111; fax (573) 874-8953; bcso@boonemo.gov
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Boone County Sheriff's Office - home · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Missouri is the origin of merit selection - the 1940 Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan, copied by dozens of states - but at circuit level the Plan applies in only six jurisdictions: Clay, Greene, Jackson, Platte, St. Louis County and the City of St. Louis. Boone County is not one of them, despite Columbia's size, so Boone County elects its circuit and associate circuit judges on a partisan ballot. The associate circuit judge normally sets bail at first appearance. The Missouri Supreme Court and Court of Appeals are merit-selected statewide with no exception. No Boone County judge is named on any county page opened here, so none is named. Judges are state judicial officers, not county officials.
Missouri Circuit Court - circuit judge
- Not found
Missouri Circuit Court - associate circuit judge (sets bail at first appearance)
- Not found
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 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
- Boone County's roster is unusually good for Missouri and unusually plain. The Current Detainees report at report.boonemo.gov is the county's own system, searchable by name, exportable to Excel, and it prints its own head count - 'Detainee Count: 422' across nine pages of fifty - with fields for last, first and middle name, suffix, sex, race, age, city and state, each linking to a detail page. The county also advertises a second live report, the 07:00 Report, which was not opened here.
- The capacity check is marked 'no' even though a live population number is published, because no rated bed capacity appears anywhere that was opened. Boone County publishes how many people are in the jail today and not how many the jail is built to hold.
- The county's domain is boonemo.gov, with the live reports on report.boonemo.gov. Both are first-party.
- Missouri has no state jail inspection. No Missouri state agency inspects county jails. The Department of Corrections operates and inspects state prisons under RSMo chapter 217 and that authority does not reach chapter 221 county and city jails. The Missouri Sheriffs' Association publishes non-binding jail guidance across seven categories and runs jail-administrator training, but MSA is a private association of sheriffs, not a regulator, and nothing makes its standards enforceable. The only statutory mechanisms Missouri law creates are local and lay: a grand jury visit to the jail under RSMo 221.300, and a county board of visitors under RSMo 221.320 to 221.350, whose yearly report is required by RSMo 221.350. No Boone County board-of-visitors report and no grand jury jail report was found, though the county-commission minutes where such a report would most likely sit were not reachable from here.
- Missouri has no death-in-custody reporting law - the state's own federal DCRA plan says so outright and describes collection by quarterly emails to roughly 612 agencies, with the Department of Public Safety conceding it cannot ensure that all agencies are participating. There is no public dataset. RSMo 58.451(1)(5) requires notice to the coroner of a death where there is reasonable ground to believe it resulted from any injury or illness while in the custody of the law or while an inmate in a public institution. Nothing on the county's own site reports a death in its custody.
- Open records: RSMo 610.023 requires a Sunshine Law request to be acted on as soon as possible and no later than the end of the third business day following receipt; a delay must be explained with the earliest time and place the record will be available, and a denial must cite the specific statutory exemption within the same three business days.
- The jail runs on county money - RSMo 221.080 puts jail expense on the county commission, funded from county property and sales taxes. Federal money reaches a Missouri county jail only through per-diem boarding, SCAAP and grants.
- County Commission - the ordinary Missouri form, a presiding commissioner and two associate commissioners; RSMo 221.080 makes the commission the body that carries the expense of the jail. No commissioner could be named and no board or minutes URL is recorded: the only Boone County pages reachable from here were the sheriff's own pages and the sheriff's live detainee report. The county-government side of boonemo.gov was not opened. No dedicated jail tax or detention sales-tax levy was found.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Boone 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