The Detention Center
Newton County Jail
- Operated byNewton County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address208 W. Coler, Neosho, MO 64850
- Beds82, published by the sheriff's office
- Year built1995; the sheriff's site says construction began in 1994 and that until 1995 the jail was on the third floor of the courthouse
- Who is heldPre-trial detainees and sentenced inmates serving up to one year, per the sheriff's jail page
- Corrections DivisionManaged by Captain Jerry Hornback
- Jail line417-451-8311
- CommunicationsInmate account deposits through Access Corrections or a lobby kiosk; remote video visitation through CIDNET for a fee that is not stated; on-site video visitation free
- County-reported jail workThe county's State of the County reports mention a 2022 repair of the jail sewer system, a jail parking lot, security fence and gate, and a 2018 statement that expansion plans for additional bed space were underway
- What was triednc-so.org/annualreports.html is blocked to automated fetching by the site's robots rules, so the sheriff's annual reports could not be examined
Source: Newton County Sheriff's Office - 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 built1995 (construction began 1994)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds82
Since then
- The county's 2018 State of the County report said expansion plans for additional bed space were underway; no completed expansion was confirmed from a page that could be opened
The Sheriff
Sheriff Matt Stewart
- Runs the jailYes - the Newton County Sheriff's Office runs the Newton County Jail through its Corrections Division
- 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 address208 W. Coler Street, Neosho, MO 64850
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Newton County Sheriff's Office - Command Staff · 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 sheriff's own links page identifies the Missouri 40th Circuit Court as the circuit serving Newton 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 →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The sheriff's office runs its own domain, nc-so.org, separate from the county's newtoncountymo.com. Both are first-party and both were opened.
- The sheriff's jail page publishes the bed count (82) and year built (1995). No average daily population figure is published, so the capacity check is recorded as met on beds alone.
- No inmate roster was found on either county domain; the sheriff's links page points to the Missouri Department of Corrections offender search, which covers state prisons, not the county jail. Search results also returned a roster hosted on a vendor domain, myr2m.com, whose page did not reliably identify the agency and state; it is not counted.
- The jail page tells callers to phone for bail amounts but publishes no bond posting guidance, and says remote video visitation carries a fee without stating it, so the bond_info and fees checks are recorded as no.
- The county publishes commission agendas and weekly schedules on its notices page. The agendas listed there were not opened individually, so no board of visitors or grand jury jail report is claimed either way. The commission page names a 2026 Budget without linking it, so the budget check is recorded as no.
- Search results for this county included commercial inmate-lookup sites (for example newtonrecords.org and missouriinmaterosters.org). 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. Presiding Commissioner Daniel Swem, District 1 Commissioner Mark Knight, Interim District 2 Commissioner Ron Wallace, all listed on the county's own commission page. Commission Office, 101 South Wood Street, Neosho. The county posts weekly schedules and commission agendas (for example 10 September 2026) on its notices page; the commission page mentions a 2026 Budget but gives no link to it.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Newton 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