The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byGentry County Sheriff's Office (by operation of RSMo 221.020)
- Jail nameNot found - the county's site has no sheriff or jail section
- Whether the county holds prisonersNot established from any first-party page; the county site does not say whether it operates a jail or boards prisoners elsewhere
- What was triedhttps://gentrycounty.net/ (opened - the home page renders only a banner image and footer); https://gentrycounty.net/index.php/elected-officials/ (opened in full)
Source: · 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 Nicholas J. Tompkins
- Runs the jailRSMo 221.020 gives the sheriff of each Missouri county custody and charge of the county jail; Gentry County is not one of the three statutory exceptions
- How the office is filledElected countywide on a partisan ballot
- Sheriff's office address104 N. Polk St., Albany 64402 (state law-enforcement contact dataset)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Gentry County :: Elected Officials · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Gentry 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. The circuit judge for the circuit serving Gentry County is not named on the county's officials page.
Associate Circuit Judge
- Rebecca S. McGinley
Circuit Clerk
- Janet Parsons (clerk, not a judge - listed for completeness)
- 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
- Gentry County's official site was opened and read. It is a seven-page site with no sheriff's office section, no detention page, no budget, and no commission agendas or minutes. All ten checks are 'no' on the strength of pages actually read.
- The county's elected officials page is unusually complete for a county this small and is the source for the sheriff, the three commissioners, the associate circuit judge and the circuit clerk.
- 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. Gentry County publishes no commission minutes at all, so no such report is reachable.
- 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.
- Three-member County Commission: Presiding Commissioner Mike Sager, Commissioner First District Randy Cline, Commissioner Second District Roger Rice. Clerk of the County Commission is Shelia Clark. The county's site publishes no agendas or minutes - its entire navigation is Home, Courts & Judicial, Licenses & Fees, Election Results, Elected Officials, Local Links and Contact Us.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Gentry 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