The Detention Center
Not found — the county publishes a 'Jail' phone line at the Sheriff's Office address but gives the facility no name
- Operated byDunklin County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address1175 Floyd Street, Kennett, MO 63857 — the Dunklin County Justice Center, which the county site treats as a division alongside the Courthouse
- Jail phone573-888-4010
- HoursThe page states that 'Jail and Dispatch may be reached 24 hours, 7 days a week, including all major holidays'
- What was triedhttps://dunklincounty.gov/county-commission/ and https://dunklincounty.gov/dunklin-county-judicial-system/ — both refused for want of provenance, so commission members and judges could not be named
Source: Dunklin County Sheriff's Office · 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 Nick Darter
- Runs the jailYes — the county publishes a jail line at the Sheriff's Office address in the Dunklin County Justice Center
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- Office address1175 Floyd Street, Kennett, MO 63857; office 573-888-2424, dispatch 573-888-2409, jail 573-888-4010
- StatuteRSMo 221.020 gives the sheriff custody, rule, keeping and charge of the jail within the county and of all prisoners in it
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Dunklin 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. Dunklin 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's own site places Dunklin in the 35th Judicial Circuit, through its listing for the Juvenile Office of the 35th Judicial Circuit Court, but names no judge on any page that could be opened.
35th Judicial Circuit
- 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
- Dunklin County does hold prisoners itself. Its own site, dunklincounty.gov, publishes a dedicated jail telephone line, 573-888-4010, at the Sheriff's Office address of 1175 Floyd Street in Kennett, and says the jail may be reached around the clock. What it does not do is give that jail a name, a bed count, a roster, bond instructions, visitation rules or any rate schedule. The named check is recorded as no on a strict reading: the county discloses that a jail exists at that address, but publishes no facility name, and no name is invented here.
- The county site organises itself into a Courthouse division and a Justice Center division, with the Sheriff's Office under the Justice Center at 1175 Floyd Street. The jail sits inside that Justice Center, but the site never states this in terms and no capacity figure appears.
- Only the sheriff's office page could be opened. The County Commission page and the Dunklin County Judicial System page are in the site's navigation, but their addresses are constructed rather than search-returned and were refused for want of provenance. Commissioner names and judge names are therefore Not found rather than guessed.
- checks are recorded as no rather than left empty because a first-party county page was opened and read in full. A commissary vendor page for this county also appears in search results, but it is a vendor's own ordering portal, not the county publishing its rates, and it is not counted or cited.
- 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, which publishes non-binding jail guidance and runs jail-administrator training, 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. No such report was found published by Dunklin County.
- County Commission. The county site carries a County Commission section in its main navigation, but that page could not be opened, so no commissioner names, agendas, minutes or budget were obtained.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Dunklin 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