The Detention Center
Polk County Jail
- Operated byPolk County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address113 East Jefferson, Bolivar, Missouri 65613
- Also styledPolk County Detention Center, on the sheriff's roster page
- Built1978, holding 16 prisoners; the sheriff's page calls it the county's current jail
- Expansion1996, more than doubling capacity to 36 prisoners
- Daily population published28.1 average in 2009; 51 average in 2019, reaching as high as 66 in 2019
- OverflowThe sheriff's page says it has been necessary to house inmates in other county jails, at a cost to the county of $45 a day per inmate
- Jail administratorThe Corrections Division page names Jail Administrator Jennifer Harris as supervising jail staff, and elsewhere on the same page names Jail Administrator Rich Myers for lobby-kiosk visit approval; both are recorded as published, and neither is asserted as current
- VisitationVideo only, through cidnet.com; lobby kiosk visits need the jail administrator's approval
- Commissary and phoneCommissary through Tiger Online; phone calls collect or pre-paid account, 15-minute limit, recorded; no rates published
- MedicalContracted to a firm specialising in correctional medical care, not named
- Roster size when opened32 people listed on the current inmates roster
Source: Polk County Sheriff MO - Corrections Division · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓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 — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1978
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds36 (16 as built in 1978; expanded in 1996)
Since then
- 1996 expansion more than doubled capacity, from 16 to 36 prisoners
The Sheriff
Sheriff Danny Morrison
- Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's Corrections Division runs the Polk County Jail, also styled the Polk County Detention Center
- 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 address113 East Jefferson, Bolivar, Missouri 65613
- Listed contact417-777-9020 (24 hours)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Polk County Sheriff MO · 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 and no judicial circuit number were 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 on the jail itself. The sheriff's office runs its own domain, polkcountymosheriff.org, which counts as first-party. It publishes a live roster of current inmates with charges and bond amounts, a 48-hour release list, and a history giving the jail's build year, original and expanded capacity, and average daily population for 2009 and 2019.
- The published population figures exceed the published capacity: a 2019 daily average of 51 and a 2019 high of 66 against 36 beds. The sheriff's page itself says the county has had to house inmates in other county jails at $45 a day per inmate. The page carries no date, so the figures are recorded as published and not as current.
- The contracts check is recorded as no: the $45 daily rate is what Polk County pays to board its own inmates elsewhere, not a contract to hold other agencies' prisoners. The bond_info check is no: the roster shows bond amounts but no guidance on how to post bond. The fees check is no: commissary, phone and video vendors are named but no rates are published.
- The Corrections Division page names two different people as Jail Administrator - Jennifer Harris and Rich Myers - so neither is recorded as the current administrator.
- No Polk County government website was found within the search budget, so the county's budget, commission and minutes could not be examined, and the county seat is left as Not found rather than taken from the sheriff's address.
- Search results also returned commercial inmate-lookup sites, including jailexchange.com, missouriprisons.org and missouriinmaterosters.org. 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 is the ordinary Missouri form. The search did not return a Polk County government website and the sheriff's site links none, so no commissioner's name was confirmed and none is recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Polk 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