The Missouri State Highway Patrol is the highway patrol agency for Missouri and has jurisdiction anywhere within the state.

State laws pertaining to the Highway Patrol including its creation, powers, structure, mission and duties are specified in Chapter 43 of Missouri Revised Statutes (RSMo).

According to Chapter 43.025 RSMo: "The primary purpose of the highway patrol is to enforce the traffic laws and promote safety upon the highways. As near as practicable all personnel of the patrol shall be used for carrying out these purposes."

In 1992, MSHP became only the 10th State Police/Highway Patrol to receive accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA).

The Missouri State Highway Patrol is a division of the Missouri Department of Public Safety. Other DPS agencies include:

General Headquarters (GHQ) and the Law Enforcement Academy are located in Jefferson City, Missouri, the state capital.

The state is divided into nine troops, with troop headquarters and communications centers located in the following cities:

Missouri State University (MSU or Mo State formerly Southwest Missouri State University) is a public university located in Springfield, Missouri, United States and founded in 1905. It is the state's second largest university, with an official enrollment of 19,715 in Spring 2012. In 2011 students represented 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, and 83 countries. The Springfield campus is one of two degree granting institutions within the Missouri State University System, the other being a two-year campus in West Plains, Missouri. A bachelor of science in business from MSU is offered at the Missouri State University Branch Campus Dalian in the People's Republic of China. In addition to its main campus, MSU maintains a fruit research station in Mountain Grove and the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies program housed in Fairfax, Virginia. The school is classified by the Carnegie foundation as one of six master's colleges and universities in Missouri. The school was ranked 53rd of the Midwestern regional universities by the 2012 U.S. News and World Report, down one spot from 2011. In this category, MSU is the second highest ranked public school in Missouri and fifth overall for undergraduates.

Missouri (ⁱ/mɨˈzʊəri/) (nickname The Show Me State) is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Missouri is the 21st most extensive and the 18th most populous of the 50 United States. Missouri comprises 114 counties and the independent city of St. Louis. The four largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. Missouri's capital is Jefferson City. The land that is now Missouri was acquired from France as part of the Louisiana Purchase and became known as the Missouri Territory. Part of the Territory was admitted into the union as the 24th state on August 10, 1821.

Missouri generally mirrors the demographic, economic and political makeup of America and has long been considered a political bellwether state. With the exceptions of the Presidential elections of 1956 and 2008, Missouri's results have accurately predicted the next President of the United States in every election since 1904. It has both Midwestern and Southern cultural influences, reflecting its history as a border state. It is also a transition between the Eastern and Western United States, as St. Louis is often called the "western-most Eastern city" and Kansas City the "eastern-most Western city". Missouri's geography is highly varied. The northern part of the state lies in dissected till plains while the southern part lies in the Ozark Mountains (a dissected plateau), with the Missouri River dividing the two. The state lies at the intersection of the three greatest rivers of North America, with the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers near St. Louis, and the confluence of the Ohio River with the Mississippi north of the Bootheel. The starting points of the Pony Express Trail and Oregon Trail were both in Missouri. The mean center of United States population as of the 2010 Census is at the town of Plato in Texas County, Missouri.

A highway patrol is either a police unit created primarily for the purpose of overseeing and enforcing traffic safety compliance on roads and highways, or a detail within an existing local or regional police agency that is primarily concerned with such duties.

Duties of highway patrols or traffic police may include the following:

In Argentina, traffic policing is the responsibility of the Argentine National Gendarmerie.

In Australia, traffic policing is the responsibility of the state police forces. Each force has its own traffic sections, often a local section in each area and a statewide section.

In Brazil, traffic policing is the responsibility of state and federal police forces accordingly to the highway administration status. State administered highways (usually shorter, within state borders, two-way, single lane, lower traffic) are policed by a branch of the Military Police forces, called State Highway Military Police. At the same time Federal highways and roads (longer, crossing state borders, some double lane and high-traffic) are the responsibility of the Federal Highway Police.