The Dallas County Jail hit full capacity again on Wednesday, leading officials to begin rehabilitating previously inoperative cells to make room and exploring whether other facilities have space for transfers.
The jail has the ability to hold roughly 7,200 people but has a current limit of 7,119 due to unusable cells and logistics for segregating sexes. The population hit 7,124 on Tuesday and 7,101 Wednesday, leaving officials scrambling for short-term solutions.
County Commissioner John Wiley Price said during a meeting Tuesday a vendor is working to remediate mold in an area of the jail “that had been basically mothballed for the last 10 years” to free up space.
“We’re in trouble,” Price. “We’re doing everything we can.”
Crime in The News
Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins, center, runs interference between commissioners Andrew Sommerman, left, and John Wiley Price during a discussion on the 2026 fiscal year budget at a Commissioners Court meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025 in Dallas.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
Officials have long declared the jail to be in crisis and have discussed the need for judges to move cases faster and find alternatives to incarceration for people with mental illnesses. But shortfalls in the county’s 2023 implementation of a new case management software are also contributing to people being held in jail past release dates with no immediate solution offered by county officials.
District Attorney John Creuzot said in an interview Tuesday the technology issues are some of the most urgent needs to address the jail crisis.
“There are system breakdowns in Dallas County,” Creuzot said. “We have consigned ourselves by a lack of action to total dysfunction and you’re going to continue to have all these problems.”
Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot during a debate with candidate Faith Johnson at the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce in Dallas on Friday, Oct. 28, 2022.
Lola Gomez / Staff Photographer
County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins did not respond to a phone call Wednesday or questions submitted to his staff requesting comment on the crisis.
In recent years Dallas County has been able to avoid the fate of places like Harris County, which has spent $50 million sending its incarcerated people to Louisiana and Mississippi as its jail numbers surpass staffing levels.
However Shane Sowell, chief deputy of detention services for the sheriff’s office, said Tuesday he has contacted other counties and private facilities to inquire about available jail beds. He said the county may be able to transfer males to other facilities in order to make room for females in the Dallas County Jail.
The Commissioners Court would have to approve funding for any transfers.
“We’re in a critical situation right now,” Sowell said.
The jail population is at record levels despite monthly book-ins being relatively in line with pre-Covid levels, according to Dallas County Criminal Justice Department data.
From January to July, the average monthly bookings were 4,824 while the average population was 6,748, the county reported. During the same period in 2019 average monthly bookings were only slightly higher at 5,305 and while the average population was significantly lower at 4,857.
County Administrator Darryl Martin is spearheading efforts to create pre-arrest and post-arrest diversion programs to prevent people with severe mental illnesses from ending up in jail in the first place. In 2024, 57% of all people booked into the jail had received mental health services from the state system within the prior three years, according to data obtained by The Dallas Morning News.
Inside the Kays Tower at Lew Sterrett Jail in Dallas Tuesday September 12, 2017. (Andy Jacobsohn/The Dallas Morning News)
Andy Jacobsohn / Staff Photographer
But implementation problems with the county’s case management software are also contributing to the jail population crisis, Cruezot said.
When the county transitioned to Odyssey for its case management software in May 2023, the jail remained on its separate Adult Information Systems platform.
Because the two systems cannot communicate, the district clerk’s office has to hand deliver judgements, fingerprints, indictments and other paperwork to the jail so the sheriff’s office can send it to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice before a person can be released. (The district clerk and sheriff’s office are in the same building.)
There are multiple federal lawsuits ongoing against Dallas County related to people who were released weeks past their time served dates after delays in paperwork transmissions, including cases that occurred this year.
Of more than $17 million Dallas County spent on contracts to implement Odyssey court case management between 2020 and 2023, $2.2 million was for Odyssey software for the jail.
However the sheriff’s office has not yet implemented the change.
Sheriff Marian Brown did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday submitted through spokespeople. When previously asked if she would convert the jail to Odyssey to assimilate with the courts, she did not answer, instead stating that Odyssey was supposed to be compatible with the jail’s software.
County Commissioner Andrew Sommerman said in an interview he plans to discuss the issue at Monday’s Continuous Improvement Steering Committee to confirm whether the sheriff’s office has plans to transition software.
“I am an advocate for moving into a better program so you don’t have people running paper over by hand but I need to know if the sheriff wants it or not, and if not, we’ve got to come up with a different solution,” Sommerman said.
District Clerk Felicia Pitre said her office implemented the hand delivery because there were problems with the sheriff’s office confirming receipt electronically.
Pitre said she believes if the jail transitioned to the Odyssey software, that would help eliminate the need to hand deliver paperwork. Absent that change, she said she is working with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to implement an electronic system that will make the process automatic.
“Unless you’re working in it, nobody understands just how massive this is and what it takes to get it correct,” Pitre said. “Everyone is under pressure to release people from jail and when you have pressure of course mistakes occur.”
Also contributing to the jail’s swelling population is the fact that releases are being delayed when paperwork prepared by the district clerk’s office has errors and is returned by the state for corrections before a person can be released.
Creuzot said his office assigned an attorney to help review and correct clerk paperwork full time as a solution.
Pitre said her clerks are trained, but they are not attorneys, so mistakes will occur.
For example, if there is a reduction in a charge in a case during a plea, there have been issues where clerks include the wrong offense code on a judgement. That requires clerks to work with the district attorneys office to correct the judgment so it can be resubmitted to the state.
But if those incorrect judgments get sent to the sheriff’s office for processing, Creuzot said those employees don’t always have the expertise to ensure the documents are correct before sending them to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. When they are wrong, the state sends the paperwork back, wasting days and contributing to people being in jail longer than they should.
“Why are we creating this continued chaos with these types of multimillion dollar implications when judgments and sentences are not accurate, people are left in jail beyond their time and result in lawsuits?” Creuzot said. “What is the hold up to having integration?”