The Detention Center
Lewis County Detention Center
- Operated byLewis County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address107 South Washington St, Monticello, MO 63457
- BedsNot found - no bed count published on any page that could be opened
- Daily populationNot found
- What was triedThe sheriff's own Jail Information page, FAQ page and inmate roster page all refused automated fetches; the jail name and address come from the sheriff's home page, which was opened
Source: Lewis County Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗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 David Parrish
- Runs the jailYes - the Lewis County Detention Center
- 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.
- Listed contact573-767-5287
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Lewis County Sheriff · 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. No judge's name was 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
- The sheriff's office runs its own domain, lewiscosheriff.org, which counts as first-party and is the county's fullest web presence for the jail. It names the Lewis County Detention Center and gives its address, so the named check is met.
- The sheriff's site links an inmate roster, a jail information page and an FAQ, but all three sit behind a disclaimer step and refused automated fetches, so the roster, capacity, bond and fee checks are recorded as no rather than yes. Nothing is claimed about what those pages contain.
- Lewis County has two separate county web presences, lewiscountymo.gov and the older lewiscountymo.org. The .gov commission page was opened and supplied the commissioners and the courthouse address; lewiscountymo.org could not be resolved for fetching.
- The county commission page publishes no minutes, agendas or budget and directs the public to telephone the County Clerk, so no budget document and no board of visitors or grand jury jail report could be examined.
- 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.
- Three-member County Commission, the ordinary Missouri form. Presiding Commissioner Wayne 'Fid' Murphy, Jr., Northern Commissioner Craig Redmon, Southern Commissioner Travis Fleer. The commission meets Monday mornings, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., at the Lewis County Courthouse, 100 East Lafayette Street, Monticello. The commission page carries no link to minutes, agendas or budget documents; it directs requests to the County Clerk by telephone.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Lewis 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