St. Francois County, Missouri — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

St. Francois County Jail

Operated bySt. Francois County Sheriff's Office
Jail address1550 Doubet Road, Farmington, MO 63640
Beds188, published by the sheriff's office
BuildingThe administrative area was built in 1938 by the WPA as a dairy barn for State Hospital No. 4 and remodelled in 1996
Earlier jailsA 44-bed jail at 11 N Franklin St., which the county outgrew; before that, a jail built for $11,000 in 1871
MailIncoming mail must be in postcard form only
Jail fax573-756-4327
Daily populationNot published

Source: St. Francois County Sheriff - History · 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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what St. Francois County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-18. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found - the administrative area of the current facility was built in 1938 as a WPA dairy barn and remodelled in 1996; the year the detention wing was built or occupied is not published
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds188 (the prior jail at 11 N Franklin St. had 44)

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Jeffrey S. Crites

Runs the jailYes - the St. Francois County Sheriff's Office operates the St. Francois County Jail, and the office itself is housed in the county detention facility
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 address1550 Doubet Road, Farmington, MO 63640
Listed contact573-756-3252
Jail commandThe sheriff's command staff page lists a Jail Lieutenant, Hardy White, as the jail's senior officer

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: St. Francois County - Sheriff · 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 county's own Circuit Clerk page places St. Francois County in the 24th Judicial Circuit; it does not name individual judges, so none is recorded.

Still needed

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 county and its sheriff share one domain, sfcgov.org. The sheriff's detention page names the jail and its address; the sheriff's history page publishes its 188-bed capacity and the history of earlier jails.
Beds are published (188) but no daily population figure is, so the capacity check is recorded as met on beds alone, consistent with other Missouri groups.
The Auditor's budget worksheets page was opened but displayed no budget documents or figures, so the budget check is recorded as no. The Auditor's page also links independent audit reports and monthly expense reports, which were not examined.
The commission agendas and minutes page lists folders for agendas, minutes and boards, but no individual document titles could be read, so no board of visitors or grand jury jail report could be examined; nothing is claimed either way.
The sheriff's booking-form page is a stub with no bond or booking instructions. No roster, bond guidance, commissary or phone rate, PREA audit or housing contract was found on the county domain.
Search results for this county were dominated by commercial inmate-lookup sites (stfrancoiscountyjailroster.org, st-francois.countyjail.org, countyoffice.org and others). None is a county publication and none is cited.
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 Harold Gallaher, District 1 Commissioner Kary Buckley, District 2 Commissioner David Kater, all listed on the county's own commission page. Public meetings are held every Tuesday at 10 a.m. and recorded to the county's YouTube channel. Commission offices: 1 West Liberty Street, Suite 301, Farmington.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in St. Francois 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