The Detention Center
Buchanan County Jail
- Operated byBuchanan County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
- Address501 Faraon Street, Saint Joseph, MO 64501
- Phone(816) 236-8800
- Division commanderCaptain Joe Lysaght (the elected sheriff remains the statutory jailer under RSMo 221.020, so jail_administrator is left null)
- Beds / rated capacity234 inmates, across three separate housing units, published on the county's own Corrections page
- Average daily populationNot found - the county publishes the bed count but no population figure
- Staffing published'2 Divisional Commanders: Lieutenant of Custody and Lieutenant of Compliance, 7 Sergeants, 4 Deputies, 25 Detention Deputies, 3 property clerks, 2 kitchen staff, 1 digital download specialist, and 1 receptionist'
- Inmate telephoneSecurus Technologies; collect calls only, limited to 15 minutes per call; account setup at securustech.net, 1-972-734-1111 for mobile and 1-800-844-6591 for landline and international. No per-minute or per-call rate is published
- Commissary, video visits, email and SMSTurnkey Corrections, via www.inmatecanteen.com. No rate, deposit fee or per-message price is published
- Bond / bail guidanceNot found on any page opened - the Corrections page links an Inmate Bonding page (https://www.co.buchanan.mo.us/Inmate-Bonding) but it was refused to this agent and was not opened
- Holds for other agenciesNot found - no contract or per-diem boarding rate published
- What was triedOpened https://www.co.buchanan.mo.us/corrections . The page links Inmate Bonding, Inmate Commissary, Inmate Mail, Phone Calls, Visitation Information, Cellular Telephones/Recording Devices and Zero Tolerance pages on the same county domain; every one of those was refused to this agent and none was opened, so nothing from them is claimed. The only inmate-roster results a search returned for Buchanan County were commercial lookup sites, which are never cited here.
Source: Buchanan County, MO - Corrections · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✗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
- Beds234, in three separate housing units
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff William Puett
- Runs the jailYes - the county's own Corrections page identifies the operator as the Buchanan County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division, consistent with RSMo 221.020 giving the sheriff custody, rule, keeping and charge of the jail. Buchanan County is not one of the three Missouri exceptions
- How the office is filledElected county-wide
- County pagesDid not name the sheriff: the Corrections page names the division's commander but not the elected sheriff, and no other first-party page could be opened
- Jail address501 Faraon Street, Saint Joseph, MO 64501
- Jail phone(816) 236-8800
- Source of the nameName from the Missouri Law Enforcement Agencies list kept by the Missouri Department of Public Safety (POST program), a state list, not a county page; checked 18 September 2026
- Office (state list)Buchanan County Sheriff's Office, 501 Faraon St, St Joseph, MO 64501; phone (816) 236-8898
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Missouri Law Enforcement Agencies list (Missouri Department of Public Safety, POST program; shown on the Attorney General's Police and Sheriffs Contacts page) - statewide list, checked 18 September 2026 · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
At circuit level the 1940 Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan applies in only six jurisdictions - Clay, Greene, Jackson, Platte, St. Louis County and the City of St. Louis. Buchanan County is not one of them, so it elects its circuit and associate circuit judges on a partisan ballot; the associate circuit judge normally sets bail at first appearance. No circuit number and no judge could be sourced from a county or court page opened here. 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
- The capacity check passes on the published bed count alone - 234 inmates in three housing units. No average daily population and no population time series is published, so half of what that check asks for is missing; the pass should be read as 'beds published, population not'.
- The fees check fails in an instructive way. Buchanan County names both vendors on its own page - Securus Technologies for inmate telephone and Turnkey Corrections for commissary, video visitation, email and SMS - and publishes the 15-minute collect-call limit, but it publishes no price for any of it. A reader is sent to securustech.net and inmatecanteen.com to find out what a call or a deposit costs.
- No roster is published by the county. Every inmate-lookup result a search returned for Buchanan County was a commercial site, and commercial inmate-lookup farms are never counted or cited here.
- 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 and runs jail-administrator training, but it is a private association of sheriffs, not a regulator. The only statutory mechanisms are local and lay - a grand jury visit under RSMo 221.300, and a county board of visitors under RSMo 221.320 to 221.350, which RSMo 221.350 requires to report yearly. No Buchanan County board-of-visitors report and no grand jury jail report was found, though the commission minutes where one would most likely sit were not reachable from here.
- Missouri has no death-in-custody reporting law and no public dataset; the state's own federal DCRA plan concedes it cannot ensure all agencies participate in its quarterly email collection. RSMo 58.451(1)(5) requires notice to the coroner of a death believed to have resulted from an 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 no later than the end of the third business day following receipt, with any delay explained and any denial citing the specific statutory exemption in the same window.
- 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, and under RSMo 221.080 the body that carries the expense of the jail. No commissioner could be named and no board or minutes URL is recorded: only the county's Corrections page could be opened from here, and links off it to the rest of co.buchanan.mo.us were refused. No dedicated jail tax or detention sales-tax levy was found.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Buchanan 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