The Detention Center
Not found
- Operated byNot found
- JailNo jail is named on any Washington County page that could be opened
- Sheriff's office116 West High Street, Potosi, MO 63664
- Sheriff's web presenceA sheriff page on the county site with links to a sheriff's mobile app, crash-report portal and social media; no separate sheriff's website was found
- Not to be confused withPotosi Correctional Center, a Missouri Department of Corrections state prison near Potosi - not a county jail
- What was triedwashingtoncountymo.us home, sheriff, county commissioners and courthouse pages were opened; none names a jail, roster, bed count, bond or fee information
Source: Washington County, Missouri - Sheriff · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
0/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗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 Dwayne S. Reed
- Runs the jailNot established from a county page - the county's sheriff page names the sheriff and office but describes no jail or 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 addressWashington County Sheriff's Office, 116 West High Street, Potosi, MO 63664
- Listed contact573-438-5478 (phone and fax)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Washington County, Missouri - 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. 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 county site, washingtoncountymo.us, was reachable and its home, sheriff, commissioners and courthouse pages were read. None names a jail, publishes a roster, bed count, budget, bond guidance or fee schedule, so all ten checks are recorded as no. This is an examined county with nothing jail-related published on the pages opened.
- That no jail is named is recorded as not found, not as a finding that the county has no jail.
- Commission agendas and minutes are hosted in Google Drive folders linked from the county site. They were not opened, so nothing is claimed either way about a board of visitors or grand jury jail report in them, and no minutes URL is recorded.
- The Potosi Correctional Center near the county seat is a state prison run by the Missouri Department of Corrections, not a county jail, and is not treated as the county's jail.
- Search results included commercial inmate-lookup sites (missouriprisons.org, jailexchange.com, missouriinmates.org, inmateaid.com) and sheriff sites for Washington Counties in other states (Utah, Indiana). 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, the ordinary Missouri form. Presiding Commissioner Dave Sansegraw, 1st District Commissioner Doug Short, 2nd District Commissioner Lynn Portell, listed on the county's own commissioners page. Commission agendas and minutes are published through Google Drive folders linked from the county site; those folders were not opened.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Washington 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