The Detention Center
Putnam County Detention Center
- Operated byPutnam County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address1601 Main Street, Unionville, MO 63565 (address given on the sheriff's roster page)
- RosterCurrent-inmates list and a 48-hour release list published on the sheriff's own site; 8 people were listed when opened in September 2026
- Held elsewhereSeveral people on the roster were shown as held at other facilities - Grundy County Detention Center, Buchanan County and the Daviess-DeKalb County Regional Jail - on change of venue or transfer
- BedsNot found - no bed count published
- Daily populationNot published as a figure
- What was triedputnamso.org home, roster-choose, roster.php and message pages opened; no county government website was found in search
Source: Putnam County MO Sheriff's Office - Inmate Roster · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jason Knight
- Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's site publishes the roster of the Putnam 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 address1601 Main Street, Unionville, MO 63565
- Listed contact(660) 947-3200; 24-hour (660) 947-2515
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Putnam County MO 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, putnamso.org, which counts as first-party. It names the Putnam County Detention Center and publishes a live current-inmates roster with individual bond amounts, plus a 48-hour release list.
- The roster shows bond amounts per case but there is no general guidance on how to post bond, so the bond_info check is recorded as no.
- No bed count, daily population figure, budget, PREA audit, housing contract, or phone, video-visit or commissary rate was found on the sheriff's site.
- No county government website for Putnam County was found in search, so no budget, commission minutes or board of visitors report could be examined.
- The county seat is not recorded because no page that could be opened states it. The sheriff's office and detention center are in Unionville.
- Search also returned commercial inmate-lookup sites (missouricountyjails.org, missourijailroster.com, pickenscosheriff.org, whosarrested.com). These 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.
- Ordinary Missouri counties are governed by a three-member County Commission. No Putnam County government website was found, so no commissioner's name, agenda or minutes page was confirmed and none is recorded here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Putnam 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