The Detention Center
Oregon County Jail
- Operated byOregon County Sheriff's Office
- LocationWithin the sheriff's office in the Oregon County Courthouse, Alton
- Beds8, in 3 cell areas, one generally used for female detainees - published by the sheriff's office
- Jail AdministratorChris Johnston, listed on the sheriff's administration page
- Other agencies' detaineesHolds detainees for the City of Alton, and on occasion prisoners from another county awaiting extradition, transfer or change of venue, or held on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer; no rates published
- CommunicationsPhone service by CityTeleCoin; commissary through Tiger Commissary (TigerSnack.com). No rates published.
- RosterNot found - no inmate roster on the sheriff's site
Source: Oregon 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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds8
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Eric King
- Runs the jailYes - the Oregon County Jail is housed within the sheriff's office in the Oregon County Courthouse
- 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 address1 Court Square, P.O. Box 265, Alton, MO 65606
- Listed contact417-778-6611 (non-emergency)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Oregon County Sheriff's Office - Administration · 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 judge's name or circuit number 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, oregoncountysheriff.org, which counts as first-party and is the county's only web presence found. Its jail, administration, home and history pages were opened.
- One of the smallest jails in Missouri by published capacity: the sheriff states the jail has 8 beds in 3 cell areas. No daily population figure is published, so the capacity check is recorded as met on beds alone.
- The jail holds City of Alton detainees and occasionally prisoners on Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers, but no contract or rate is published, so the contracts check is recorded as no.
- Phone and commissary vendors are named but no rates are published, and no bond posting guidance or roster is published, so the fees, bond_info and roster checks are recorded as no.
- No county government site for Oregon County was found, so no budget, commission minutes, board of visitors report or grand jury jail report could be examined; these are not found rather than absent.
- 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.
- Ordinary Missouri counties are governed by a three-member County Commission. No Oregon County government website was found in search results, so no commissioner's name was confirmed and none is recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Oregon 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