District court in Benton County

District

The First District is Benton County. A.C.A. § 16-17-1110(1)(A) — Organization and designation, on Justia (opens in a new tab).

Judges

4, elected districtwide to numbered divisions, four-year terms.

Departments

Thirteen, each identified by the city it is located in. § 16-17-1110(1)(B) — Organization and designation, on Justia (opens in a new tab).

Courthouses

10, because several departments share a building. See all 10.

Cities covered

14. Find yours.

Civil limit

$25,000; small claims $5,000. Civil cases.

What district court handles

• Traffic citations and other violations.
• Misdemeanour criminal cases.
• City ordinance violations.
• Civil cases to $25,000 and small claims to $5,000.
• Early steps in felony matters — warrants, probable cause, first appearance, bond — before the case goes to circuit court. A state district judge may take a misdemeanour plea but not a felony plea.

Division, department, venue

These three get used interchangeably and mean different things. A.C.A. § 16-17-1102 — Definitions, on Justia (opens in a new tab) defines the first two outright:

Division —

“the designation of the judicial position.” An elected office. Benton County has four.

Department —

“the physical location where sessions of court are held.” Thirteen, named for cities.

Venue —

the building. Ten, because § 16-17-1202(c)(2) — Consolidation of city courts with district courts, on Justia (opens in a new tab) lets a court and a city agree to hear a department's docket elsewhere. That is why four departments' cases are heard at Benton County West in Gentry.

Benton County West is a grouping, not a town. Nobody lives there.

Why the judge is not just the division your city sits in

§ 16-17-1110(1)(D) — Organization and designation, on Justia (opens in a new tab) leaves the assignment of judges to departments to “the mutual agreement of the state district court judges”, and subsections (F) and (G) make the judges elected districtwide with districtwide jurisdiction. The four judges record that agreement in a written administrative plan, filed with the Supreme Court, which is what actually determines who hears a case from your city. The current one runs from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2027.

§ 16-17-138 — Mandatory holding of court for departments of a district court, on Justia (opens in a new tab) requires court to be held in each department at least monthly unless the city agrees otherwise in writing — which is why the smaller courts sit once or twice a month rather than weekly.