The Detention Center
Jackson County Detention Center
- Operated byJackson County — listed as a division of the Jackson County Sheriff's Office on the Sheriff's own site, while the county government site also maintains a Jackson County Department of Corrections page for the same facility
- Detention commandDeloris Wells — Director, Jackson County Detention Center (Deputy Director Michael Cunningham; Major Tony Bowers)
- Jail address7000 East U.S. 40 Highway, Kansas City, MO 64129
- Average daily population872 inmates in 2019, per the county's own Corrections page
- StaffingJust over 350 employees, per the county's own Corrections page
- Second county facilityRegional Correctional Center, 505 W 13th Street, Kansas City, MO 64106, listed under Jackson County venues
- Court that sets bond16th Circuit Court, 1315 Locust, Kansas City, MO 64106, per the county's detention center page
- BedsNot found — no page opened states a rated bed capacity
Source: Jackson County MO — Jackson County Detention Center · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
6/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
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 — the county publishes a 2019 average daily population of 872 but no rated bed capacity on any page opened
Since then
- Not found — the county's detention center page points to a separate modernization site, jcdetentioncenter.com, which was not reachable and is not cited
The Sheriff
Sheriff Darryl Forté
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office presents the Jackson County Detention Center as one of its own divisions, with a civilian Director beneath the Sheriff
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff. Jackson County is a charter county, but the sheriff remains an elected office
- Not the Kansas City Police DepartmentThe Jackson County Detention Center sits inside Kansas City, which spans four counties, but it is a county facility. The Sheriff's Office states plainly that it does not accept bonds for Kansas City Police Department arrestees and directs those callers to 816-234-5180
- Sheriff's Office address4001 NE Lakewood Court, Lee's Summit, MO 64064
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Jackson County Sheriff — Jackson County Detention Center · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Jackson County is one of only six Missouri jurisdictions — with Clay, Greene, Platte, St. Louis County and the City of St. Louis — where the Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan reaches the trial bench. Its circuit and associate circuit judges are merit-selected: a commission sends the governor a panel of three, and the appointee then stands in a yes/no retention election rather than a partisan one. Everywhere else in Missouri these judges are elected on a partisan ballot. They are state judicial officers, not county officials. Individual judges' names were not confirmed from a page opened, so none are listed. The circuit is identified as the 16th on the county's own detention center page.
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 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 →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- THE KANSAS CITY TRAP: the Jackson County Detention Center stands inside Kansas City, and Kansas City spans four Missouri counties. The Kansas City Police Department is a city agency and is not the Jackson County Sheriff. What the COUNTY runs is the Jackson County Detention Center at 7000 East U.S. 40 Highway, plus the Regional Correctional Center at 505 W 13th Street. The Sheriff's Office bond page makes the split explicit: it will not accept bonds for KCPD arrestees.
- Two county pages describe the same facility differently. The Sheriff's Office site lists the Detention Center as one of its divisions with Director Deloris Wells, Deputy Director Michael Cunningham and Major Tony Bowers. The county government site carries a Jackson County Department of Corrections page for the facility. Both are first-party; both are recorded rather than choosing between them.
- Capacity is scored yes on the strength of a published average daily population of 872 (2019) on the county's own Corrections page; a rated bed count was not found. That page also states a 2019 adopted budget of just over $31 million and just over 350 employees.
- Budget is scored yes on the county's own 2024 Recommended Budget PDF, which was opened; its table of contents carries a Corrections section at page 257 and a Detention Population Control subsection at page 260. The line-item dollar figures were not in the portion returned, so no figure is quoted from it. The county also publishes its Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the year ended December 31, 2023.
- PREA is scored no. The Sheriff's Office publishes a PREA page stating a zero-tolerance policy and how to report, but it publishes no audit result or compliance report, and the check asks for audit results.
- Fees is scored yes: the Sheriff's commissary page publishes electronic messaging at $0.50 per incoming or outgoing message and photo delivery at $1.00 per photo, with a weekly commissary cap of $60 for food and $60 for non-food items; the bond page publishes a 7% vendor fee on the lobby kiosk. Per-minute phone call rates are not published.
- Roster is scored yes: the county runs its own inmate search at https://jccweb.jacksongov.org/inmatesearch/ (opened; it was returning a processing error at the time) and links a public search from its own services page.
- Inspections is scored no. Nothing resembling a board-of-visitors yearly report or a grand jury jail report was found on the county's detention, corrections or Legislature pages. The Legislature publishes agendas and journals and uses a Legistar calendar at jacksonco.legistar.com, but neither could be opened to check the packets.
- 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. The Missouri Sheriffs' Association publishes non-binding jail guidance but is a private association, not a regulator.
- The only inspection-like mechanisms in Missouri law 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 dataset; the state's own federal DCRA plan concedes it cannot ensure all agencies participate. RSMo 58.451(1)(5) requires notice to the coroner of a death believed to have resulted from injury or illness while in the custody of the law.
- Missouri's Sunshine Law, RSMo 610.023, requires a records request to be acted upon as soon as possible and in no event later than the end of the third business day after receipt.
- The county seat is recorded as Independence, but no first-party page that opened states it in words, so seat_source is left empty. The county's own pages that opened place the Legislature and the 16th Circuit Court at Kansas City addresses; the county has courthouses in both cities.
- Jackson County is a CHARTER county, so its governing body is a nine-member County Legislature, not the three-member County Commission found in ordinary Missouri counties. Chair: Donna Peyton (2nd District At-Large). Vice Chair: Sean E. Smith (6th District). At-Large: Jalen Anderson (1st), Donna Peyton (2nd), Megan L. Smith (3rd). District: Manuel Abarca IV (1st), Venessa Huskey (2nd), Charlie Franklin (3rd), DaRon McGee (4th), Jeanie Lauer (5th), Sean E. Smith (6th). The Legislature meets Mondays at 3:00 p.m. at the Jackson County Courthouse, 415 E 12th Street, 2nd Floor, Kansas City.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Jackson 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