Daviess County, Missouri — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Daviess-DeKalb Regional Jail

Operated byJoint facility of Daviess and DeKalb counties, governed by a Board of Directors made up of the two presiding commissioners and the two sheriffs
Who runs itNot found — the county does not name the current holder
Answers tothe Daviess-DeKalb Regional Jail's board of directors (both counties' presiding commissioners and sheriffs)
Why this is differentThe elected county sheriff does not run this jail.
Jail address102 N Meadows Lane, Pattonsburg, MO 64670
CapacityHouses up to 200 inmates
Phone(660) 367-2200
Facility websiteddcrj.com — the jail's own site, first-party to both owner counties
What was triedThe ddcrj.com home page could not be opened: https redirects to http and http redirects again, a loop the fetcher will not follow. Only the RESOURCES page opened

Source: Daviess County Sheriff's Office — JAIL · checked 2026-09-18

Transparency rating

3/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✓Who is in custody
✓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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Daviess County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-18. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsUp to 200 inmates

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Larry Adams Jr.

Runs the jailNo — the sheriff's own JAIL page states the regional jail 'is not ran by the Daviess County Sheriff's Office'
How the office is filledElected county sheriff; the county lists his term as Jan 2025 to Dec 2028
Office address609 B South Main Street, Gallatin, MO 64640; (660) 663-2031
StatuteRSMo 221.020 makes the sheriff the jailer in the ordinary Missouri county; here the two counties run a joint regional facility under a board on which the sheriff sits

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Daviess County Sheriff's Office · 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. Daviess County is not among them, so its circuit and associate circuit judges are elected on a partisan ballot — the county's own officials page lists Associate Circuit Judge Micha Dixon with a term, as it does for elected county officers. Judges are state judicial officers, not county officials. The county's judicial circuit number was not published on any page opened.

Associate Circuit Judge

Micha Dixon

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 share the cost of a regional jail. A regional board 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 belong to the Daviess-DeKalb Regional Jail, whose board of directors is both counties' presiding commissioners and sheriffs.
The boardBoard of County Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Daviess County does not run a jail of its own. Its prisoners go to the Daviess-DeKalb Regional Jail at 102 N Meadows Lane, Pattonsburg, a facility it owns jointly with DeKalb County. The sheriff's own JAIL page says so plainly — the jail 'is not ran by the Daviess County Sheriff's Office' and is governed by a Board of Directors consisting of the Daviess and DeKalb presiding commissioners and their sheriffs. That is the arrangement, not a gap in the record.
The regional jail's own site, ddcrj.com, is treated here as first-party to both owner counties, because its governing board is composed of those counties' own elected officials. Its RESOURCES page carries a Detainee Search link, and that is what the roster check rests on.
Capacity is marked yes on the strength of the published figure of up to 200 inmates. No daily population or average daily population number is published on either county's pages or on the jail's, and none is asserted here.
The ddcrj.com home page could not be read. https://ddcrj.com/dd/ answers with a 302 to the http address, and the http address redirects again, producing a loop. Only the RESOURCES page at page_id=17 opened. Bond, visitation, commissary and phone-rate pages may exist behind that home page but were not seen, so they are not claimed.
No county budget, no corrections or detention line item, no death in custody, no PREA audit, no inspection report, and no boarding contract or per-day rate was found on daviesscountymo.gov, daviesscountysheriffmo.com or ddcrj.com.
A site at dekalbcountysheriffsoffice.com ranks highly in searches for this regional jail and names staff, but it states outright that it is 'a privately owned informational website that is not owned or operated by any state government agency.' It is a commercial lookalike and nothing from it is used here.
No Missouri state agency inspects county jails. The Department of Corrections operates and inspects state prisons under RSMo chapter 217; that authority does not reach chapter 221 county and city jails, and the Missouri Sheriffs' Association is a private association of sheriffs, not a regulator. The only statutory mechanisms are local and lay: a grand jury visit to the jail under RSMo 221.300, and a county board of visitors under RSMo 221.320 to 221.350, whose yearly report is required by RSMo 221.350. No such report was found published by Daviess County or by the regional jail.
County Commission: Presiding Commissioner Jim Ruse (Jan 2023 to Dec 2026), North District Commissioner David Cox (Jan 2025 to Dec 2028), South District Commissioner C. Wayne Uthe (Jan 2025 to Dec 2028). The presiding commissioner also sits on the regional jail's board of directors. The county site carries a 'Commission Agenda and Minutes' section and a 'Financials & Salary Commission Minutes' section.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Daviess 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.

This jail is run by a regional board. The sheriffs and presiding commissioners who sit on it are elected.

Names verified 2026-09-18 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered