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 byFranklin County Sheriff's Office (by operation of RSMo 221.020)
- Jail nameNot found on any Franklin County page that could be opened
- What was triedhttps://franklinmo.gov/ - refused (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED). A general web search returned only commercial inmate-lookup farms, which are never cited. A second search scoped to allowed_domains franklinmo.gov returned a single unrelated URL (taxrelief.franklinmo.gov senior property-tax relief application) and no sheriff, jail, commission or budget page.
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 Steven Pelton
- Runs the jailRSMo 221.020 gives the sheriff of each Missouri county custody and charge of the county jail; Franklin County is not one of the three statutory exceptions
- How the office is filledElected countywide on a partisan ballot
- Sheriff's office address#1 Bruns Drive, Union 63084
- Source caveatConfirmed from the state's County Sheriff's Offices contact dataset on data.mo.gov, not from a Franklin County page - no Franklin County page could be opened
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Missouri Open Data - County Sheriff's Offices Based on Missouri Law Enforcement Agencies (data.mo.gov, dated 09/18/2026) · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Franklin County is not one of the six Missouri jurisdictions where the 1940 Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan reaches the trial bench, so its circuit and associate circuit judges are elected on a partisan ballot. They are state judicial officers, not county officials. No judge could be confirmed from a page opened in this session, so none is named.
Circuit Court and Associate Circuit Court serving Franklin County
- 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
- Franklin County was NOT examined and must not be scored as a closed county. Its own site refused every automated attempt, so audit.checks is deliberately left as an empty object rather than a row of 'no' answers.
- What was tried: https://franklinmo.gov/ (refused, PROVENANCE_REQUIRED); a general search for the county's sheriff, jail, roster and budget, which returned only commercial inmate-lookup farms that are never cited; and a search restricted to the franklinmo.gov domain, which returned one unrelated tax-relief application URL.
- The only fact established is the sheriff's name and office address, and that came from the state's own law-enforcement agency contact dataset on data.mo.gov, not from the county.
- 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 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, which RSMo 221.350 requires to report yearly to the county.
- Missouri has no death-in-custody reporting law and no public statewide dataset; RSMo 58.451(1)(5) requires only that the coroner be notified of a death from injury or illness in custody.
- Under the Sunshine Law, RSMo 610.023, a records request must be acted upon as soon as possible and no later than the end of the third business day after receipt.
- Franklin County is governed by a three-member County Commission (presiding commissioner and two associate commissioners) in the ordinary Missouri form. No commissioner name or board page could be confirmed - no Franklin County page could be opened.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Franklin 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