The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byNot found
- What was triedhttps://www.salemmo.com/dent/index.php — county home page; no jail anywhere in its navigation
- What was triedhttps://www.salemmo.com/dent/offices/sheriff/index.php and https://www.salemmo.com/dent/offices/sheriff/ — sheriff pages cover concealed-carry permits and civil process fees only
- What was triedhttps://www.salemmo.com/dent/offices/commissioners.php — no jail, no budget, no minutes
Source: Dent County, Missouri — official site · 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 Bob Wells
- Runs the jailNot stated — the county's own sheriff pages say nothing about a jail at all
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- Office address112 E. Fifth Street, Suite 7, Salem, MO 65560; 573-729-3241
- StatuteRSMo 221.020 gives the sheriff custody, rule, keeping and charge of the jail within the county
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Dent 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. Dent 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 county site lists a Circuit Court Clerk office but no judge names and no circuit number.
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
- Dent County's official web presence is hosted under salemmo.com/dent. Four of its pages were opened and read in full — the county home page, two sheriff pages and the county commission page — and not one of them mentions a jail, a detention facility, or where county prisoners are held. All ten checks are no. The county was examined; it simply publishes nothing on the subject.
- Whether Dent County operates its own jail, or boards its prisoners with a neighbour, could not be established from any county source, and nothing is asserted here either way. The sheriff's page covers concealed-carry permits ($100 new, $50 renewal, $10 transfer) and civil process fees ($35 civil, $20 criminal) only, and tells anyone with other questions to telephone the office.
- The commission page publishes no agendas, no minutes and no budget, so there was nowhere on the county's own site for a board of visitors report or a grand jury jail report to appear.
- No Missouri state agency inspects county jails. The Department of Corrections 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 rather than 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.
- County Commission: Presiding Commissioner Gary M. Larson (R), First District Commissioner Keith Green (R), Second District Commissioner Jimmy Williams (R). The page states they meet Mondays and Thursdays from 9:00 a.m. to noon, but publishes no agendas, minutes or budget.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Dent 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