The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byNot found
- What was triedhttps://www.dcsomo.com/ and https://dcsomo.com/contact-us/ — the Dallas County Sheriff's Office site is live but shows only 'Sorry, we're doing some work on the site and will be back shortly.' No content of any kind is served
- What was triedhttps://www.dallascountymo-oem.gov/community-resources-contact-info — a county emergency-management page listing the sheriff's office, county commission, circuit court and prosecuting attorney addresses, with no jail or detention entry
Source: Dallas County Emergency Management · 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 Darren Cheek
- Runs the jailNot established — no first-party Dallas County page describes a jail
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- Office addressDallas County Sheriff's Office, 204 S. Poplar St., Buffalo, MO 65622; non-emergency 417-345-2441
- County page searchThe sheriff's own site, dcsomo.com, is offline for maintenance and names no officeholder; no other county page names the sheriff
- 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)Dallas County Sheriff's Office, 204 S Poplar St, Buffalo, MO 65622; phone (417) 345-2441
- 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
Missouri's 1940 Nonpartisan Court Plan covers the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals statewide, but at circuit level it reaches only Clay, Greene, Jackson, Platte, St. Louis County and St. Louis City. Dallas County is not among them, so its circuit and associate circuit judges are elected on a partisan ballot. They are state judicial officers, not county officials. The Dallas County Circuit Court is at 108 S. Maple St., Buffalo, but no judge names and no circuit number were published on any county page opened.
Circuit and Associate Circuit Court
- 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
- The Dallas County Sheriff's Office maintains its own domain, dcsomo.com, which is the county's primary law-enforcement web presence. Throughout this research it served nothing but an under-construction notice: 'Sorry, we're doing some work on the site and will be back shortly.' Two separate addresses on that domain were opened and both returned the same notice. The sheriff's name could not be confirmed from any first-party page and is recorded as Not found rather than guessed.
- Checks are recorded as no rather than left empty because a first-party Dallas County page was in fact opened and read — the county's emergency-management site at dallascountymo-oem.gov — and it publishes no jail content. The sheriff's own site was reachable but empty, which is a different thing from a site that refuses every attempt.
- Whether Dallas County operates a jail of its own, or boards its prisoners elsewhere, could not be established from any county source, and nothing is asserted here either way.
- The first search for this county returned only commercial inmate-lookup farms. A second search that blocked those domains found the sheriff's real domain and the county emergency-management site.
- No Missouri state agency inspects county jails. RSMo chapter 217 gives the Department of Corrections authority over state prisons, not over chapter 221 county jails, and the Missouri Sheriffs' Association is a private association rather than 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 whose yearly report RSMo 221.350 requires.
- County Commission, at 108 S. Maple St., Buffalo, MO 65622, phone 417-345-2701. No commissioner names, agendas, minutes or budget were published on any Dallas County page that could be opened.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Dallas 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