Search Montgomery County Jail Inmates

Montgomery County Jail Overview

Montgomery County Jail, also described locally as the Montgomery County Detention Center, is operated by the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in Mount Ida. The sheriff's public address for the office and jail is 225 Fairgrounds Rd., Mount Ida, AR 71957, and the main 24-hour phone number is 870-867-3151. Sheriff Neal Thomas heads the office, and the sheriff Administration page names Merle Buxton as Detention Facility Administrator. The facility is the only local detention facility identified in the Montgomery County facility map for this build.

The jail handles county-level custody, not Arkansas state prison custody and not federal or immigration detention. Its population can include adults booked after local arrests, people awaiting bond or first court handling, people serving short county sentences, defendants held on body attachments or warrants, and people waiting for transfer or release processing. Montgomery County is a rural west central Arkansas county that the sheriff describes as covering about 800 square miles near the Ouachita National Forest, rivers, mountains, and Lake Ouachita. That geography matters because arrests may involve the sheriff's office along with agencies such as Arkansas State Police, Arkansas Game and Fish, U.S. Forest Service law enforcement, and other cooperating public-safety agencies.

The sheriff's Administration page is the clearest official source for what happens inside the detention operation. It says detention staff are responsible for receiving, intake, and release processing for prisoners, including computer book-in, fingerprinting, photographing, searching, change-out, and housing cell-block assignment. The same page says staff control entrances and exits, monitor security video surveillance, and observe inmates in housing areas.

The official Administration page shows the detention administrator and describes intake and release duties for the Montgomery County Detention Center.

Those intake details are the best local basis for understanding how a jail record is created before a name may appear on the online roster.

Montgomery County Jail Capacity and Population

The sheriff's site does not publish a current rated capacity for Montgomery County Jail. The strongest sourced capacity figure in the research is from the Vera Institute Incarceration Trends county dataset, which lists Montgomery County, Arkansas with 12 rated jail beds in 2019. Vera's 2019 row also lists a total jail population of 9, with 7 people in pretrial custody and 2 in sentenced custody. Treat those as historical dataset figures, not as the live jail count today.

The official current and released roster pages both showed "Inmate Roster (0)" when inspected on May 29, 2026. That zero count is a point-in-time public roster display. It should not be read as a permanent condition or as the county's annual average jail population. In a small jail, a single weekend arrest, release, transfer, or body attachment can noticeably change the public count.

How to Look Up an Inmate at Montgomery County Jail

Start with the official Montgomery County current inmate roster. The county roster is free and public, but the inspected page did not show first-name, last-name, booking-number, date-of-birth, or facility search fields. Instead, it showed a roster count, a Released toggle, an Order By Name control, pagination, and an auto-refresh script that reloads the page every 300,000 milliseconds, or 5 minutes. If the roster is empty or the person is not listed, call 870-867-3151 and ask for the Detention Center.

The current roster page showed the public roster shell, the Released toggle, the Name ordering option, and the empty roster count at inspection.

Because there is no search box on that page, the practical search method is to review the visible list when entries exist, switch to the released view when needed, and use the detention phone line for recent bookings, transfers, or unclear custody status.

1. Open the official current roster at montgomerycountysheriffar.org/roster.php.
2. Check the roster count and any listed names. If the count is zero, no public current entries are visible at that moment.
3. Use the Released link to check the released-inmate roster for someone who may have recently left custody.
4. Use Order By Name where the roster offers it, because no keyword search fields were captured.
5. Call 870-867-3151 and ask for the Detention Center if the roster does not answer the question, especially for a fresh arrest, release, bond, or transfer.

Use the right custody system when the county roster is not the right match. The Arkansas Department of Corrections inmate search is for sentenced state prisoners and county-to-DOC transfer situations, not ordinary county pretrial custody. Arkansas VINELink is a custody-notification and status fallback. The BOP inmate locator is for federal sentenced prisoners, while ICE ODLS is for immigration detainees.

Montgomery County Jail Address and Contact

Use the sheriff's Fairgrounds Road address for jail and detention questions unless an official office gives a different destination for a specific service. The sheriff site lists the main phone as a 24-hour number, while administrative office hours are Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For non-emergency public-record or administrative questions, call during those hours when possible. Emergency situations should use 911.

The sheriff's public-contact materials also warn that email and web forms are not monitored 24 hours a day and should not be used for confidential or sensitive personal information. For a custody question, a visit schedule, or an urgent jail issue, the direct phone route is more reliable than a web message.

Visiting Someone at Montgomery County Jail

The official jail page says inmates are allowed one free on-site video visit every weekend. Visits must be scheduled 24 hours ahead by calling 870-867-3151 and asking for the Detention Center. Available visitation windows are Saturday or Sunday from 8:00 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Visitors should arrive early, bring valid ID, and check in with the front desk. Late arrival costs visit time, juveniles must be accompanied by an adult, and cellphones are not allowed during visitation.

The official jail page publishes Montgomery County's local visitation rules, medication drop-off rule, commissary link, CityTeleCoin link, and VINELink reference.

Those rules should be checked before every visit because the page does not publish a holiday schedule, lockdown cancellation policy, remote visit fee table, or attorney-visit procedure.

Mail, Phone, and Money at Montgomery County Jail

The sheriff jail page does not publish a full local inmate mail-address format, envelope rule, book policy, photograph policy, or mail-scanning rule. Before mailing anything to an inmate, call 870-867-3151 and ask the Detention Center to confirm the current address format and restrictions. Do not assume a booking number, housing unit, or vendor-specific mail format unless the jail confirms it.

Personal item drop-off is narrow. The jail page says no outside food or beverages may be brought in for inmates. The only items that may be dropped off are prescription medications prescribed to that inmate and kept in the original container. That rule is more specific than generic jail property advice, so it should control unless detention staff give current instructions.

For commissary, the sheriff jail page links CommissaryDeposit as the way inmates can get items purchased through commissary.

The local sheriff page does not publish commissary fees, order cutoffs, spending limits, refunds, or kiosk options, so families should check the vendor and confirm local rules with the jail.

For calls, text messages, and video calls, the sheriff jail page directs families to CityTeleCoin.

CityTeleCoin is the sheriff-linked communications provider, but the county page does not publish local pricing, call length, blocked-number rules, or refund rules.

Booking and Intake at Montgomery County Jail

Montgomery County booking starts when a person is received at the detention facility after arrest or court order. The official Administration page describes the detention facility as responsible for receiving, intake, and release processing. It specifically names computer book-in, fingerprinting, photographing, searching, change-out, and housing cell-block assignment. Those steps create the local jail record, but the sheriff site does not state exactly how quickly a new booking appears on the public roster.

A person may be booked by the sheriff's office or after another agency operating in Montgomery County makes an arrest. The sheriff homepage describes cooperation with Arkansas State Police, Arkansas Game and Fish, Arkansas Forestry Commission, U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The arresting agency can affect later records, court routing, accident reports, and payment questions, so callers should have the full legal name, date of birth if known, approximate arrest time, and arresting agency if available.

Release processing can follow bond, court order, completion of a short sentence, transfer to Arkansas DOC, or another agency's custody decision. The county roster can lag or omit context, especially when the person is newly booked, already released, or moved to a state, federal, or immigration system. For bond and body attachment questions, call the jail and then confirm court records through the appropriate court or clerk.

Records, Mugshots, and Custody Boundaries

Arkansas public-record access for jail material starts with the sheriff FAQ and the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. The sheriff FAQ says most Sheriff's Office records are public information and can be viewed or copied for a nominal fee, but it also lists important limits. Active or open criminal-investigation records, some personnel records, sealed or expunged court records, and juvenile records may be unavailable. The sheriff also says the office cannot provide criminal-history or background information from ACIC or NCIC databases; statewide criminal-history checks belong with Arkansas State Police or the proper state route.

Booking photos require careful wording for Montgomery County. The Administration page confirms photographing is part of detention intake, so a booking photo is taken locally. But the inspected public roster had no entries, so the research did not verify whether live Montgomery County roster profiles display mugshots, how long any photo stays online, or whether released entries show photos. If a booking photo is needed and it is not visible on the roster, ask the Sheriff's Office about a booking-record request and expect FOIA exceptions for active investigations, juveniles, sealed records, or other restricted records.

Do not use the county roster for sentenced Arkansas prison inmates. Once a person is sentenced to state prison or appears on a DOC waiting list, search the Arkansas DOC locator. Do not use the county roster for federal sentenced prisoners or immigration detainees either. Use BOP for federal sentenced custody and ICE ODLS for immigration detention. VINELink can help with notifications and custody-status checks, but it is not a substitute for court records, bond orders, or direct jail confirmation.

About Montgomery County Jail

Montgomery County Jail is a small sheriff-operated county detention facility serving a rural county with major outdoor recreation areas and a large land area. The jail's official public materials focus on custody basics: roster access, visitation, commissary, communication vendors, medication drop-off, and VINELink. They do not publish a current official capacity, a detailed program list, a medical request process, a grievance form, or a local accreditation statement.

The main recent jail-specific public-information item located in the research is an October 29, 2024 Jail Standards Class held at the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office with detention officers from Montgomery County and Pike County. That is relevant local context, but it should not be overstated as accreditation or as a published inspection result. State-level Arkansas criminal detention facility standards still provide the broader framework for detention facility operations and records.