The Detention Center
None - prisoners held at the Macon County Jail
- Operated byMacon County (host jail); Linn County Sheriff's Office retains its prisoners' bonds and board bills
- Where prisoners go"Linn County no longer has a jail. We currently house inmates at Macon County Jail." - Linn County Sheriff's Office
- Host jail addressMacon County Jail, 101 E. Washington Street, Macon, MO 63552, (660) 385-2062, as given by the Linn County Sheriff's Office
- Visiting and commissaryThe sheriff's office directs visiting, commissary and inmate enquiries to the Macon County Jail
- BondsPosted at the sheriff's office, 115 W. Jackson, Linneus; cash or credit/debit card, the latter with processing fees; a signed acknowledgment of bond conditions is required
- Board billsThe sheriff's office bills released prisoners for the cost of imprisonment, citing RSMo 221.070 and 221.120; payment plans offered; no daily rate published
- Former jailThe 1871 Linn County Jail and Sheriff's Residence at 102 N. Main St., Linneus, listed on the National Register in 2001, became a museum in the 1970s and was demolished in 2024 (Wikipedia)
- What was triedNo Linn County government website (as distinct from the sheriff's linncosomo.gov) was returned by search, so no commission, minutes or budget page could be opened
Source: Linn County Missouri Sheriff's Office - Inmate Roster · 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 Carrie Melte
- Runs the jailNo county jail - the sheriff's office states Linn County no longer has a jail and houses its inmates at the Macon 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.
- Office address115 W. Jackson Street, Linneus, MO 64653
- Non-emergency line(660) 895-5312
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Linn County Missouri Sheriff's Office - Message From the 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 judicial circuit number or 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
- Linn County has no jail. Its sheriff's own site, linncosomo.gov, states that the county no longer has a jail and houses its inmates at the Macon County Jail in Macon. That is the finding, not a gap; the named, roster and capacity checks are recorded as no because there is no Linn County jail to publish them for.
- The sheriff's site still publishes an Inmates section - a bond-posting page with location, accepted payment and bond conditions (which meets the bond_info check), a board-bill page, and a roster page that now carries only the statement that prisoners are housed at Macon County.
- No per-diem rate for boarding Linn County prisoners at Macon County was published on the Linn County sheriff's pages that were opened.
- The sheriff's office runs its own .gov domain, linncosomo.gov, which counts as first-party. No separate county-government site was found, so the budget, commission minutes, board of visitors report and grand jury jail report could not be examined.
- Search results included commercial inmate-lookup sites (missouriinmatesearch.org, missourijailroster.com). They are not county publications and are not cited or counted.
- 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, is presumed from Missouri law but was not confirmed: no Linn County government website was found, so no commissioner's name was confirmed and none is recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Linn 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