Darryl Martin is spearheading efforts<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n![\"Inside](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/DYZV4MFLQFBE3FA5JQOZDEZQJ4.jpg\")
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Inside the Kays Tower at Lew Sterrett Jail in Dallas Tuesday September 12, 2017. (Andy Jacobsohn\/The Dallas Morning News)<\/p>\n
Andy Jacobsohn \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n
But implementation problems with the county\u2019s case management software are also contributing to the jail population crisis, Cruezot said.<\/p>\n
When the county transitioned to Odyssey for its case management software in May 2023, the jail remained on its separate Adult Information Systems platform.<\/p>\n
Because the two systems cannot communicate, the district clerk\u2019s office has to hand deliver judgements, fingerprints, indictments and other paperwork to the jail so the sheriff\u2019s office can send it to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice before a person can be released. (The district clerk and sheriff\u2019s office are in the same building.)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
However the sheriff\u2019s office has not yet implemented the change.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s software.<\/p>\n
County Commissioner Andrew Sommerman said in an interview he plans to discuss the issue at Monday\u2019s Continuous Improvement Steering Committee to confirm whether the sheriff\u2019s office has plans to transition software.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am an advocate for moving into a better program so you don\u2019t have people running paper over by hand but I need to know if the sheriff wants it or not, and if not, we\u2019ve got to come up with a different solution,\u201d Sommerman said.<\/p>\n
District Clerk Felicia Pitre said her office implemented the hand delivery because there were problems with the sheriff\u2019s office confirming receipt electronically. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnless you\u2019re working in it, nobody understands just how massive this is and what it takes to get it correct,\u201d Pitre said. \u201cEveryone is under pressure to release people from jail and when you have pressure of course mistakes occur.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also contributing to the jail\u2019s swelling population is the fact that releases are being delayed when paperwork prepared by the district clerk\u2019s office has errors and is returned by the state for corrections before a person can be released.<\/p>\n
Creuzot said his office assigned an attorney to help review and correct clerk paperwork full time as a solution.<\/p>\n
Pitre said her clerks are trained, but they are not attorneys, so mistakes will occur. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But if those incorrect judgments get sent to the sheriff\u2019s office for processing, Creuzot said those employees don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy 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?\u201d Creuzot said. \u201cWhat is the hold up to having integration?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas County Jail hit full capacity again on Wednesday, leading officials to begin rehabilitating previously inoperative cells…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":197995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,4219,1596,7290,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-197994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-county","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-tx","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115142822898137809","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Dallas](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/3W2B2WA74BELRLKFNQIU4HTE5A.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Dallas](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/FSYEYARKFJETFOFXENZJVRHKP4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n