The Detention Center
None - former Livingston County Jail closed 31 December 2012; detainees held at the Caldwell County Detention Center and the Daviess Dekalb Regional Jail
- Operated byLivingston County Sheriff's Office Detention Division (holding arrangements); host jails run by their own operators
- Where prisoners goCaldwell County Detention Center is the primary facility; Daviess Dekalb Regional Jail takes overflow and conflict cases
- Former jail48-bed facility at 901 Webster Street, Chillicothe, operated 1978 to 31 December 2012; 10 cell areas, 2 for women, 2 maximum-security units, 1 padded cell
- Why it stays closedThe sheriff's office estimates reopening would need about $1.4 million a year for staffing alone (15 full-time and 2 part-time detention staff) and puts a new 100-bed facility at upwards of $30 million; it states there are no current plans to build a jail, citing cost and staffing
- RosterThe sheriff publishes a current in-custody roster; 33 people were listed when opened, most shown as housed at Caldwell County
- BondsThe sheriff's FAQ explains cash-only bonds, corporate surety through bail bonding companies, and that bond money may be applied to fines, costs, fees or restitution
- Per-diem rate paid to host jailsNot found
- What was triedThe sheriff's History page was opened and carries no jail building detail; the county's Commissioner page was opened but names no commissioners and links no minutes or budget
Source: Livingston County Sheriff's Office - Detention Division · checked 2026-09-18
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1978 (former jail; closed 31 December 2012)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds48 in the former jail; the county has had no jail beds of its own since 2012
Since then
- None - the sheriff states there are no current plans to build a jail
The Sheriff
Sheriff Dustin Woelfle
- Runs the jailNo county jail since 31 December 2012 - the sheriff's Detention Division holds Livingston County detainees at other counties' jails
- 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 address901 Webster St., Chillicothe, MO 64601
- Business line660-646-0515
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Livingston 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 county's own Departments and Officials page links to the Judiciary Officials of the 43rd Circuit, the circuit serving Livingston County; no individual 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
- Livingston County has had no jail since 31 December 2012. Its sheriff's own site, livcoso.org, says detainees are held at the Caldwell County Detention Center, with the Daviess Dekalb Regional Jail for overflow and conflict cases. That is the finding, not a gap.
- The sheriff's Detention Division page is unusually candid: it gives the closed jail's bed count, layout and years of operation, the staffing cost of reopening it, an estimate for a new 100-bed jail, and states that the old design prevented compliant housing of women.
- The named and capacity checks are recorded as no because there is no Livingston County jail to name or to count beds in; the Detention Division page does name the two host facilities.
- The roster check is met: the sheriff publishes a live in-custody roster of Livingston County detainees showing where each is housed.
- No per-diem rate paid to Caldwell County or the Daviess Dekalb Regional Jail was found published, so the county's cost of boarding out prisoners is not recorded.
- The county's government site, livingstoncountymo.gov, was opened; its Departments and Officials and Commissioner pages carry no commissioner names, minutes, agendas or budget, so no budget figure, board of visitors report or grand jury jail report could be examined.
- Search results included commercial inmate-lookup sites (missouriprisons.org, missouriprisonroster.org, mcdonaldcountygov.com) and a Livingston County, Michigan page. None is 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 referred to collectively on the county's own Commissioner page, which gives the commission's address as 700 Webster, Chillicothe, MO 64601, phone (660) 646-8000, but does not print the commissioners' names, so none is recorded here. No minutes, agenda or budget page was found on livingstoncountymo.gov.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Livingston 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