The Detention Center
Christian County Jail
- Operated byChristian County Sheriff's Office (Jail Division)
- Named on a first-party page"Christian County Jail" on the Sheriff's Office live inmate list at ccso.christiancountymo.gov
- Address110 W. Elm Street, Suite 70, Ozark, MO 65721
- Population shownThe live list displayed a current in-custody count of 172 when opened; no bed capacity is published alongside it
- What was triedhttps://www.christiancountysheriff.net/ and https://ccso.christiancountymo.gov/inmates.php and https://ccso.christiancountymo.gov/inmates2.php were opened. The Sheriff's Office jail-division, PREA, visitation and inmate-mail subpages are linked from the homepage but could not be opened (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED); no Christian County government page was reachable at all
Source: Christian County Sheriff's Office — live inmate list · 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 Brad Cole
- Runs the jailYes — the Christian County Sheriff's Office Jail Division. RSMo 221.020 makes the sheriff the jailer
- How the office is filledElected county officer
- Sheriff's Office / Jail Division address110 W. Elm Street, Suite 70, Ozark, MO 65721
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Christian County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Missouri's 1940 Nonpartisan Court Plan covers the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals statewide, but at circuit level it applies in only six jurisdictions — Clay, Greene, Jackson, Platte, St. Louis County and St. Louis City. Christian County is not one of them, so its circuit and associate circuit judges are elected on a partisan ballot. They are state judicial officers, not county officials. No court or county page naming Christian County's judges or confirming its circuit number could be opened, so no judge is named here.
Circuit Court — judges
- 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
- Sheriff Brad Cole and the Jail Division address were taken from the Sheriff's Office own site; the roster and the jail's published name from the Sheriff's Office subdomain ccso.christiancountymo.gov.
- The live roster shows a current in-custody count (172 at the time it was opened) but no bed capacity, so `capacity` is recorded as no.
- The Sheriff's Office homepage links a PREA information page and jail-division general-information page. Neither could be opened, so neither is credited. A linked page that could not be read is not a published result.
- No Christian County government domain was returned by search, so no county budget, commission minutes or agenda packet could be examined.
- No Missouri state agency inspects county jails. The Department of Corrections inspects state prisons under RSMo chapter 217 and that authority does not reach chapter 221 county jails. The only statutory mechanisms are local and lay: a grand jury visit under RSMo 221.300 and a county board of visitors under RSMo 221.320–221.350, which RSMo 221.350 requires to report yearly to the county. No such report was found for Christian County.
- Missouri has no death-in-custody reporting law and no public statewide dataset; RSMo 58.451(1)(5) requires notice to the coroner of a death in custody. Nothing published by Christian County was found.
- Missouri's Sunshine Law, RSMo 610.023, requires a records request to be acted on no later than the end of the third business day after receipt, with an explanation and an earliest-availability time if it cannot be produced in that window, and a specific statutory exemption cited for any denial.
- Christian County is governed by a County Commission (presiding commissioner and two associate commissioners) in the ordinary Missouri form. No Christian County government page could be opened, so no commissioner is named.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Christian 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