The Detention Center
Marion County Jail
- Operated byMarion County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address1703 Marion City Road, Palmyra, MO 63461
- Jail AdministratorBarb Powell, named on the sheriff's Jail Division page; the elected sheriff remains the jailer under RSMo 221.020
- Beds104, published on the county's own sheriff page
- RosterThe sheriff publishes a current in-custody roster; about 80 people were listed when opened
- VisitingLobby kiosk visits Monday-Friday 5-10 p.m. and weekends in three blocks; remote visits daily; three of each per week, up to 4 visitors, 20 minutes, scheduled 24 hours ahead
- BondsPayable 24/7 by credit or debit card through GovPayNet (govpaynow.com, 1-888-604-7888)
- Charges publishedRemote visits require at least $10 in an ICSolutions prepaid account; email replies $0.50 each; kiosk deposit fees vary by amount; no phone call or commissary price list
- Two courthousesMarion County has a second courthouse in Hannibal as well as the seat at Palmyra (Wikipedia); the sheriff lists a Hannibal phone line
Source: Marion County Sheriff's Office - Jail Division · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓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
- ✗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
- Beds104 (published by the county)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jimmy Shinn
- Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's office administers a 104-bed jail in Palmyra
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff; the sheriff's site says he was elected in 2008 and took office in January 2009
- 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 address1703 Marion City Rd., Palmyra, MO 63461
- Listed contact(573) 769-2077 Palmyra; (573) 221-0678 Hannibal
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Marion County Sheriff's Office - Meet Your 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
- The most transparent county in this group. The sheriff's own domain, mcsomo.com, names the Marion County Jail and its administrator, publishes a live in-custody roster, visiting rules and a 24/7 card bond-payment route; the county's marioncounty-mo.gov sheriff page publishes the 104-bed capacity.
- The capacity check is met on the published bed count together with the live roster count; no average daily population figure is published.
- The fees check is recorded as no. The Jail Division page publishes a $10 minimum balance for remote visits and a $0.50 email reply charge, but no phone call rate and no commissary price list.
- The county's home page refused an automated fetch; its departments, commission, county clerk and sheriff pages were opened. None links minutes or a budget document, so no jail budget, board of visitors report or grand jury jail report could be examined.
- No PREA material and no agreement to hold other agencies' prisoners was found on either domain.
- Search results included commercial inmate-lookup sites (jailexchange.com, missouricountyjails.org, missouriprisons.org, missouriofficialrecords.com). 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 David Lomax, Eastern District Associate Commissioner Larry Welch, Western District Associate Commissioner Lacey Miller, all listed on the county's own commission page, at 100 South Main Street, Suite 107, Palmyra. The commission meets every Monday, 9:30 a.m. to noon. County Clerk Marla Meyers; the clerk's page says the office keeps commission records, the county budget and financial statements, but neither page links minutes or a budget document.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Marion 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