The Detention Center
Moniteau County Jail
- Operated byMoniteau County Sheriff's Office
- Jail mailing address210 East North Street, California, Missouri 65018 - given on the sheriff's home page for jail mail
- Built2012
- BedsThe sheriff's jail page states the jail currently houses 52 inmates at max capacity
- Jail administratorJanis Wise, with Sierra Rimel as assistant jail administrator - sheriff's staff, not a separately appointed official
- VisitationIn-person Sundays 9am-noon and 2pm-5pm; video visitation online
- Phone and commissaryCommissary through Stellar via jailATM.com and phones through CIDNET; no rates published
- What was triedThe sheriff's home page, jail page and construction-completed post were opened, and the Missouri Association of Counties county page. No Moniteau County government website was returned by either search spent on this county.
Source: Moniteau County Sheriff's Office - Moniteau County Jail · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓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 — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built2012
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds52 (stated by the sheriff's office as the jail's max capacity)
Since then
- Not found - the sheriff's office reports a new sheriff's office building completed in August 2024; the page does not say whether it changed the jail
The Sheriff
Sheriff Tony Wheatley
- Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's office publishes the Moniteau County Jail and its jail administrator on its own site
- 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.
- Sheriff's office address1221 East Buchanan Street, California, MO 65018 - the sheriff's office states construction of its new building was completed in August 2024
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Moniteau 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. 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 sheriff's office runs its own domain, moniteaucountysheriffsoffice.com, which counts as first-party. It names the jail, its year built (2012), a 52-inmate maximum capacity and the jail administrator.
- The capacity check is recorded as met on the published maximum capacity alone; no daily population figure is published.
- Addresses differ across sources: the sheriff's site gives 1221 East Buchanan Street for the new sheriff's office (completed August 2024), 210 East North Street for jail mail, and 110 North High Street for civil papers, while the Missouri Association of Counties lists the sheriff at 101 E North St. The jail's physical address is therefore not asserted.
- The fees check is recorded as no: commissary and phone vendors are named but no rates are published. No roster, bond procedure, PREA audit or contract rate was found.
- The first search for this county returned only commercial inmate-lookup sites (moniteaucountyjail.org, moniteaucountyjailmo.org and others), which are not cited or counted.
- No county government website was found, so no budget, commission minutes, board of visitors report 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: the Missouri Association of Counties page lists a Presiding Commissioner and Associate Commissioners for the 1st and 2nd Districts at 200 E Main St, California, but does not name them, and no county government website was found, so no commissioner's name is recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Moniteau 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