{"id":228847,"date":"2025-09-15T13:51:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T13:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/228847\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T13:51:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T13:51:20","slug":"dallas-county-jail-near-capacity-not-full-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/228847\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas County Jail near capacity, not full, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DALLAS \u2014 Over two dozen counties in Texas are close to overcrowding at their jails, according to the Texas Commission of Jail Standards <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tcjs.state.tx.us\/population-reports\/\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tcjs.state.tx.us\/population-reports\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">public records<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><b>What You Need To Know<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In Dallas County, the jail reached 100% capacity earlier this month, according to county commissioners<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>According to the Dallas County Sheriff\u2019s Office, the jail facility can house about 7,100 inmates, but according to a Dallas County judge, there\u2019s extra space<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>In other cities like Houston, officials are having to send inmates to neighboring states because their facilities are over capacity<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown wrote an open letter to the public saying the jail was near full but not at max capacity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In Dallas County, the jail reached 100% capacity earlier this month, according to county commissioners.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were at a place where we were 100% full a little over a week ago,\u201d said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Dallas County Sheriff\u2019s Office, the jail facility can house about 7,100 inmates, but according to Jenkins, there\u2019s extra space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs we sit here today, we have 7,422 beds available today in our jail, and only 16 them, 194 of those are filled. So there\u2019s an excess of over 400 bed capacity there,\u201d said Jenkins.<\/p>\n<p>But during a Dallas County Commissioners Court meeting, the county\u2019s Criminal Justice Department director sounded the alarm that the jail exceeded capacity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are in crisis. We are at 100%. Our bookings are at record levels,\u201d said Charlene Randolph earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>Jenkins says there are many factors that cause a surge. He says there\u2019s an increase in inmates processed during the summer and software issues that can delay an inmate\u2019s release.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have some computer issues that we\u2019ve had to work through. So, there\u2019s been some issues with one of our jail towers needing to take some beds offline to fix a fire safety situation, so all those things come together. But I\u2019m really proud of the management. The team here at Dallas County did so that we could stay in compliance with the\u00a0beds and not just send people out of town or out of state,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In other cities like Houston, officials are having to send inmates to neighboring states because their facilities are over capacity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHarris County right now has people in Louisiana, have people in Mississippi, and they\u2019re paying to the tune of about $50 million over and above their regular budget,\u201d says Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price.<\/p>\n<p>In San Antonio at the Bexar County Jail, public records show it reached near capacity at 96% in August.<\/p>\n<p>But Jenkins says that at this time, there\u2019s no need to send inmates anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown wrote an open letter to the public saying the jail was near full but not at max capacity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInformation was broadcast that the Dallas County Jail was \u2018in crisis,\u2019 and jail population was at 100% capacity. This was not accurate information,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now, I don\u2019t believe we\u2019ll need to send people to other places. We are looking at what would be the best thing if that did have to happen,\u201d said Jenkins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS \u2014 Over two dozen counties in Texas are close to overcrowding at their jails, according to the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":228848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,7362,12170,5281,1596,123658,50,5292,358,123657,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5284],"class_list":{"0":"post-228847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-app-nested-news","10":"tag-app-public-safety","11":"tag-ctv","12":"tag-dallas","13":"tag-marcine-graham","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-public-safety","16":"tag-texas","17":"tag-topic-latest-public-safety-crime-stories","18":"tag-tx","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa","25":"tag-vod"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115208643026431303","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228847","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=228847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}