The Detention Center
Jefferson County Jail
- Operated byJefferson County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address400 1st Street, PO Box 100, Hillsboro, MO 63050
- Housed inJefferson County Justice Center, 400 First Street, Hillsboro, which opened in 2008
- Beds260 total, published by the sheriff's office
- Jail line(636) 797-5081
- Daily populationNot published - the roster page shows an in-custody list but no population figure
- What was triedjeffcomo.org county pages redirect to jeffcomo.gov, which refused every automated fetch, so no county budget, council or minutes page could be opened
Source: Jefferson County Sheriff's Office - About · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✗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 built1991
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds260 (110 as built in 1991; 150 added in the 2008 renovation)
Since then
- 2008 renovation added 150 beds, bringing the jail to 260; the Jefferson County Justice Center that houses it opened in 2008
The Sheriff
Sheriff Dave Marshak
- Runs the jailYes - the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office operates the Jefferson County Jail
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- Statutory basisRSMo 221.020 gives the sheriff of each county the custody, rule, keeping and charge of the jail and of all prisoners in it; RSMo 221.080 puts jail expense on the county commission.
- Agency size published162 sworn officers and 76 civilian employees, 238 total
- Accreditation claimedThe office states it holds CALEA certification
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Jefferson County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Missouri's 1940 Nonpartisan Court Plan covers the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals statewide, but at circuit level it applies in only six jurisdictions - Clay, Greene, Jackson, Platte, St. Louis County and St. Louis City. This county is not one of them, so its circuit and associate circuit judges are elected on a partisan ballot. They are state judicial officers, not county officials. The judicial circuit number was not confirmed from a page that could be opened.
- 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
- Largest county in this group and the only one that publishes a bed count.
- The sheriff's office runs its own domain, jcsd.org, which counts as first-party. It publishes a live in-custody roster and the jail's construction and capacity history.
- Beds are published (260) but no average daily population figure is published, so the capacity check is recorded as met on beds alone.
- The county government domain jeffcomo.gov refused every automated fetch. Budget, council membership and commission minutes therefore could not be examined and are recorded as not found rather than as absent.
- The sheriff's site lists navigation pages for bondsmen, inmate commissary and inmate phone cards, but those pages could not be opened, so the bond_info and fees checks are recorded as no rather than yes.
- 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. The Missouri Sheriffs' Association publishes non-binding jail guidance and runs jail-administrator training, but it is a private association of sheriffs, not 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 221.320-221.350, which RSMo 221.350 requires to report yearly to the county.
- Missouri has no death-in-custody reporting law and no public dataset; RSMo 58.451(1)(5) requires only notice to the coroner of a death in custody. Nothing on the county's own site publishes a death in its custody.
- No statewide Missouri county-jail population or capacity dataset exists.
- Jefferson County is a charter county in the St. Louis metro, so its governing body is a County Council rather than the three-member County Commission used by ordinary Missouri counties. The county's own County Council page (jeffcomo.org/CountyCouncil.aspx) redirects to jeffcomo.gov, which refused every automated fetch, so no council member's name was confirmed and none is recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Jefferson 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