The Detention Center
Not scored. The county's own website was not reachable in the session that produced this record, so its disclosures were never examined. This is a gap in the research, not a finding about the county.
- Operated byCooper County Sheriff's Office (by operation of RSMo 221.020; not confirmed from a county page)
- What was triedThe county search returned only commercial inmate-lookup farms (coopercountyjailmo.org, coopercountyjail.org, inmatesearchmissouri.org, missourijailroster.com, missouriprisonroster.org) plus Wikipedia. Every commercial result was disregarded as required and none is cited. Wikipedia lists the county's official site as coopercountymo.gov, but that URL was never returned by a search and constructed URLs are refused for want of provenance, so no Cooper County page was ever opened
- Not the same thingThe Boonville Correctional Center in Boonville is a Missouri Department of Corrections state prison, not the Cooper County jail. Do not conflate them
Source: · checked 2026-09-18
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 Christopher Class
- Runs the jailRSMo 221.020 makes the sheriff of each Missouri county the jailer; Cooper County is not one of the statutory exceptions
- How the office is filledElected county officer
- County page searchNo Cooper County first-party URL was returned by search and none could therefore be opened
- 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)Cooper County Sheriff's Office, 200 Main St, Boonville, MO 65233; phone (660) 882-2772
- 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
Cooper County is not one of the six Missouri jurisdictions (Clay, Greene, Jackson, Platte, St. Louis County, St. Louis City) where the Missouri Plan reaches the circuit 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 naming them could be opened.
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
- CHECKS DELIBERATELY LEFT EMPTY. Cooper County was not examined at all. Its county search returned no first-party URL whatsoever — only commercial inmate-lookup farms and Wikipedia — and with the search budget exhausted no further attempt was possible. Not one Cooper County page was opened. Scoring ten "no" checks here would record an unexamined county as a closed one, so `checks` is an empty object.
- Boonville is recorded as the seat from Wikipedia, which is not a first-party source and is cited as such.
- Wikipedia gives the county's official web address as coopercountymo.gov. It is recorded here only as a lead for a future pass; it was not opened and is not cited as a source for anything.
- No Missouri state agency inspects 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, whose yearly report RSMo 221.350 requires.
- 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.
- Missouri's Sunshine Law, RSMo 610.023, sets a three-business-day deadline to act on a records request.
- Cooper County is governed by a County Commission in the ordinary Missouri form (presiding commissioner and two associate commissioners). No Cooper County government page could be opened, so no commissioner is named.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Cooper 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