The Coryell County Jail on Sept. 1, 2021

The Coryell County Jail is a 92-bed facility with a mandate from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to stay below 80 inmates. When the population goes above 80, the Sheriff’s Office, which manages the jail, is required to send inmates to other facilities to stay in compliance.

As the population of Coryell County has grown in the last several years, so have the number of daily inmates. The jail, however, has not. This has resulted in an increased number of inmates being sent to other counties at an increased cost to taxpayers.

Through the first 10 months of this fiscal year Coryell County spent $1.3 million to house inmates in eight counties. That figure is expected to rise to $1.5 million before the fiscal year ends Oct. 1.

On average 120 inmates are housed out-of-county every day compared with an average of 85 at the Coryell County Jail. The cost varies by jail, averaging $55 per day per inmate. That does not include transporting the inmate or any medical expenses the inmate may incur.

Four full-time employees manage the daily shuffle required to get an average of 15 inmates in and 15 inmates out of the facility every day. Jailers drive inmates as far away as Erath and Comal County. And as the COVID cases continue to rise, finding jails willing to take the inmates is becoming an increasingly more difficult task.

“This is a very real problem,” Sheriff Scott Williams said in an interview with the Messenger on Sept. 1. “We did struggle with it before, but it has become an exponentially larger problem since the pandemic.”

The Coryell County Jail serves two district courts and the county court at law. The courts were shut down for months and no jury trials were held for most of last year due to COVID. But the number of people arrested and charged with crimes did not stop.

Sheriff Williams said they have worked to get those with misdemeanors and less serious charges out of the jail through pre-trial services. The Sheriff’s Office looks at its jail roster daily to see if anyone meets the criteria for a personal recognizance bond, which allows them to await trial at home.

But they’ve culled their roster as a stop-gap measure for so long that only those charged with serious crimes are left. A look at the roster on Sept. 1 showed numerous charges of sexual assault of a child, multiple aggravated assaults and four held on murder charges.

Between the type of charges filed against the inmate, the health issues some inmates have and the dangers of transferring prisoners during this new COVID surge, finding spots for every inmate is now even more challenging.

Williams said five of the eight counties that Coryell County has contracts with refused inmates due to COVID last week. As the hospitalization rates continue to climb in Texas, that trend could continue.

“I can’t blame these other sheriffs at all,” Williams said. “The money is easier made when you have a perfect inmate versus one that has a health issue, or a mental issue or a violent issue.”

Regardless of what the other jails say, Williams is still required to find beds for the inmates. If he doesn’t, the jail is considered out of compliance and runs the risk of being shut down altogether. Thus far the commission has been understanding, but that can change at any point.

“I will give Mr. Wood, the director, and his staff at the commission credit, they see we are actively trying,” Williams said. “We are in eight contracts. That’s absurd for a county our size.” 

Voters overwhelmingly rejected a bond in May that would have paid for the construction of a new jail. Williams expressed no ill will toward anyone who voted against the jail. But he did point out that the mortgage payment, estimated at $1.9 million over 20 years, is getting close to the amount of money the county is paying each year to house inmates out of county. With that figure increasing by $200,000 each year, it will only be a few years before that happens.

“When you are robbing Peter to pay Paul, it’s eventually going to catch up to you,” Williams said.

Another bond to construct a new jail cannot be put on the ballot for three years. But waiting three years for a solution is no longer an option.

“There are so many things we’ve done to put a Band-Aid on this problem,” Williams said. “We’ve slowed the bleeding. What are we going to do to stop the bleeding?”

On Aug. 12 the Coryell County Facility Advisory Committee was formed to provide guidance to the Commissioners Court on how to address the lack of space at the jail and modernize county-owned buildings. The meetings are not open to the public and no report has been issued yet.

Williams said he believes it will take everyone from elected officials, to the prosecutors, down to every tax-paying resident, to find a solution.

“I think it needs to be us coming together to say, you know what, we have a problem,” Williams said. “What can we do to fix it?”