Desha County, Arkansas

Arrests across Desha County — from the farm towns of Dumas and McGehee to the small communities along the Mississippi — are handled by the Desha County Sheriff's Office, based in Arkansas City. Deputies book defendants into the county jail in the seat, where they wait on a first appearance or a transfer to another facility; staff can confirm a booking by phone at (870) 877-2327. Desha County keeps no public roster of its own, so the most dependable check on who is in custody anywhere in the state is the Arkansas VINE service, which follows custody status and can send release notifications. You can also open the Desha County mugshot gallery here, or return to the statewide Arkansas booking directory.

About Desha County

Desha County was organized in 1838 and takes its name from Captain Benjamin Desha, a soldier of the War of 1812. Its roughly 740 square miles occupy the southeastern tip of Arkansas, edged on the east by the Mississippi River and crossed by the Arkansas and White rivers, which join the Mississippi near the county's lower end. Arkansas City has kept the courthouse since steamboat days — the 1900 Romanesque Revival building on Robert S. Moore Avenue, with its four-story clock tower, still presides over the little seat — while Dumas and McGehee grew into the county's largest towns. Cotton built this Delta country and still fills its fields, alongside rice, soybeans, and a paper mill at Cypress Bend. Desha County also holds a sober chapter of national history: near McGehee sat the Rohwer War Relocation Center, where the United States imprisoned thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II — the actor George Takei among them as a boy — and its camp cemetery is now a National Historic Landmark. For arrests in the counties next door, see Drew County to the west, Lincoln County to the northwest, and Arkansas County to the north.