The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byButler County Sheriff's Office
- Jail nameNot found - the county's sheriff page gives a jail telephone number, 573-686-8067, but never names the facility
- Beds / rated capacityNot found
- Bond / bail guidanceNot found
- Inmate phone, video visit and commissary ratesNot found
- Holds for other agenciesNot found
- What was triedOpened https://butlercountymo.com/ and https://butlercountymo.com/sheriff/ . The county site's own navigation lists Commissioners, Circuit Courts, Judges, Elected Officials and Services pages on the same domain; each was refused to this agent and none was opened, so nothing from them is claimed. The county courthouse address, 100 N. Main Street, Poplar Bluff, MO 63901, is published on the county home page.
- Name trap avoidedbutlersheriff.org is the Butler County, OHIO sheriff's office - a different Butler County with its own jail roster at butler.miamivalleyjails.org. It was opened, identified as Ohio, and is not used as a source for this county. Missouri's Butler County publishes at butlercountymo.com
Source: Butler County, MO - 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 Mark Dobbs
- Runs the jailYes - RSMo 221.020 gives the sheriff custody, rule, keeping and charge of the county jail and of all prisoners in it. Butler County is not one of the three Missouri exceptions
- How the office is filledElected county-wide
- Office address200 Oak Street, Poplar Bluff, MO 63901
- Office phone573-785-8444
- Jail phone573-686-8067
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Butler County, MO - Sheriff · 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. Butler 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. The county's site carries Circuit Courts and Judges pages, but both were refused to this agent, so no circuit number and no judge is named 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
- 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
- Two Butler County pages were opened - the county home page and the sheriff's page - so the checks were run, on a thin base. The sheriff's page is a contact card: a name, two addresses and three phone numbers, one of them labelled Jail Phone. The jail itself is never named, so even the 'named' check fails. Everything deeper on the county domain - Commissioners, Circuit Courts, Judges, Elected Officials, Services - was refused to this agent and was not examined; those pages may hold more than this record shows.
- A name collision worth flagging: searching for a Butler County sheriff returns butlersheriff.org, which is Butler County, Ohio. That site does publish a jail roster and a jail-services page. It has nothing to do with Missouri and is not used 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 such report was found for Butler County, and the commission pages where one would most likely sit were not reachable from here.
- Missouri has no death-in-custody reporting law and no public dataset. 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. The county publishes a Commissioners page at https://butlercountymo.com/commissioners/ , but it was refused to this agent and was not opened, so no commissioner is named and no meeting schedule, agenda, minutes or budget link is recorded. No dedicated jail tax or detention sales-tax levy was found on the two pages that were opened.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Butler 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