The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byNot found
- JailNo jail is named on any Madison County page that could be opened
- Sheriff's web presenceNo website of the sheriff's own was returned by search; the county departments page lists only the sheriff's name and phone number
- Courthouse1 Courthouse Square, Fredericktown, MO 63645, (573) 783-2176
- What was triedmadisoncountymo.us home and departments pages were opened; madisoncountymo.us/sheriff and /commission returned 404. Every other search result was a commercial inmate-lookup site
Source: Madison County, Missouri - Departments · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
0/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗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 Nic Adams
- Runs the jailNot established from a county page - the sheriff is listed as an elected official but no jail is described on any county page that could be opened
- 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 contact573-783-2234
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Madison County, Missouri - Departments · 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
- Madison County's own site, madisoncountymo.us, is a thin directory: it lists elected officials and phone numbers, including Sheriff Nic Adams, but names no jail and publishes no roster, bed count, budget, minutes, bond guidance or rates.
- No Madison County page that could be opened says whether the county operates a jail or where its prisoners are held. That is recorded as not found rather than as a finding that the county has no jail.
- All ten transparency checks are recorded as no. The county domain was reachable and was read, so this is an examined county with nothing published, not an unexamined one.
- The search for this county returned only commercial inmate-lookup sites, several styled to look official - madisoncountydetentionmo.org, fredericktowncityjailmo.org, missouricountyjails.org, jailexchange.com, missourijailroster.com, missouriinmatesearch.org and missouriprisonroster.org. None is a county publication and 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. Presiding Commissioner Jason Green, 1st District Commissioner Tom Stephens, 2nd District Commissioner Larry Kemp, all listed on the county's own departments page. County Clerk Donal Firebaugh. No minutes, agenda or budget page was found on the county site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Madison 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