{"id":366744,"date":"2025-11-09T11:32:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T11:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/366744\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T11:32:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T11:32:19","slug":"bexar-continues-sending-inmates-money-outside-of-the-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/366744\/","title":{"rendered":"Bexar continues sending inmates, money outside of the county"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bexar County continues to send inmates to jails in nearby counties \u2014 a practice Sheriff Javier Salazar says will remain necessary to meet state jail standards. County Commissioner Grant Moody calls it \u201can additional cost on top of the costs of running the jail,\u201d as it moves more than $4 million in taxpayer money out of the county each year.<\/p>\n

In July 2024, Bexar County began transferring inmates<\/a> to other county jails to ease pressure on a facility that, the month prior, was just 51 inmates shy of capacity. At the time, Salazar said the practice would become \u201cthe new normal\u201d as his office and county commissioners worked to finalize contracts with Burnet and Kerr counties.<\/p>\n

County data shows that as of Sept. 26, 252 Bexar County inmates were housed outside the jail \u2014 182 in Burnet County and 70 in Kerr County. All were what\u2019s known as \u201cpaper-ready\u201d or inmates who have completed the court process and are awaiting pick up by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice <\/strong>to serve out their sentences.<\/p>\n

State law<\/a> provides a maximum of a 45-day window for pickup and transport to TDCJ facilities from counties after an inmate becomes paper-ready. Until they\u2019re transferred, those inmates remain the county\u2019s financial and logistical responsibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey get basically 45 days of free rent from Bexar County. It\u2019s more cost effective for them to wait as long as they can within that 45 days,\u201d Salazar said. \u201cKnowing that we\u2019re going to have to incur the cost, we do what we have to do as far as jail standards, and we have to house them out of county at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

That pickup process currently takes an average of 29 days for Bexar County \u2014 just one day under the statewide average, according to TDCJ data.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the county\u2019s daily housing cost of $87.17, a 29-day stay comes to roughly $2,527 per inmate. Sending an inmate to Kerr or Burnet counties at rates of $65 and $80 per day, respectively, reduces that cost to between $1,885 and $2,320. Those day rates include fixed expenses such as staffing costs, facility maintenance and upkeep as well as food and medical care for the inmates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even with lower daily rates in other counties, the savings are largely offset by fixed expenses Bexar County continues to pay to operate its own jail.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t speak to all the specifics about how that $87 was calculated, but by shipping off another 300 inmates, we\u2019re not going to reduce our salary costs significantly at the jail or be able to reduce many of those costs that are going into that number. \u2029So the reality is those costs are going to be there regardless,\u201d Moody said. \u201cWith the jail, near capacity anyway. There\u2019s really no cost savings that can come with that. So it\u2019s just additional costs on top of our costs of running the jail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salazar said the decision to send inmates to other counties ultimately comes down to compliance with state jail standards \u2014 even if it means sending taxpayer money elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat money going to other counties helps them pay their bills, I would not dispute that,\u201d Salazar said. \u201cBut with that being said, I can\u2019t, just for the sake of not sending money to another county, say, \u2018You know what? Let\u2019s just continue to house and then we\u2019ll be out of compliance with jail standards.\u2019 Something\u2019s got to give and in this instance, that\u2019s the lesser of two evils.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maintaining compliance, he said, means the jail must remain below its maximum capacity. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards also requires one jailer for each floor of the facility where 10 or more inmates are housed, with no fewer than one jailer per 48 inmates.<\/p>\n

The county formally built the practice of sending out its inmates into its annual budget last year, adopting $4.2 million in funding for fiscal year 2024\u201325 \u201cdue to space and staffing issues.\u201d <\/p>\n

That figure rose to $4.5 million in the fiscal 2025\u201326 budget approved earlier this year to \u201callow the Sheriff\u2019s Office to send out inmates when the jail is at capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moody said that amount likely underestimates the cost.<\/p>\n

\"\"Bexar County Precinct 3 Commissioner Grant Moody speaks during a county budget work session on Tuesday, Aug. 26. Credit: Diego Medel \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n

\u201cI disagreed with the estimate of $4.5 million, and I shared the math publicly in court,\u201d he said. \u201c We allocated 4.5 million, but as I said in court, you do the math on our current run rate, and it\u2019s more like $7 million per year that we will spend.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

With that funding already built into the county\u2019s budget, Salazar said the decision to continue housing inmates elsewhere will remain driven by population management and space limits at the jail.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have the room to keep them in house. Obviously keeping them here is ideal, but we don\u2019t have the room to do it if we want to maintain jail standards,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can only have so many people in this facility, and when we\u2019re already at that number, then obviously at that point we\u2019ve got to house people out.\u201d<\/p>\n

But state data show Bexar\u2019s jail hasn\u2019t been at capacity in recent months. According to TCJS population reports<\/a>, the jail operated between 91% and 93% of capacity from July through September, with a rated capacity of 5,108 inmates.<\/p>\n

As of the most recent reporting period, the county housed 4,673 inmates \u2014 leaving space for roughly 400 more \u2014 while still paying to house 266 elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Moody said he thinks inmates should remain in Bexar County if space permits but acknowledged that additional operational factors may sometimes limit capacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of renovations and maintenance projects that go on in the jail, and sometimes there\u2019s a need for additional space to complete those repairs,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t speak to anything specifically, but that could be a driver for keeping some additional capacity. But from my vantage point on Commissioners Court, and from a budgetary standpoint, if we have space in the jail, let\u2019s utilize that space first before we pay to send inmates to surrounding counties.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sheriff said population trends fluctuate throughout the year but added that recent declines could allow the county to bring some inmates back.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to get that population down,\u201d he said. \u201cRight now, it looks like it\u2019s starting to trend down a little bit. Around this time of year, it usually does. If those numbers hold, then absolutely, it makes more sense to bring some of those people back under our roof.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moody questioned the framing of the issue through the lens of state delays in inmate pickups, saying it risks distracting from long-standing capacity challenges at the jail.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the people are deflecting from our own, you know, mismanagement on the issue and trying to put that on the state, but the state has always done that pick up in that 30 to 45 day window, and they have their own challenges,\u201d He said.\u201d Ultimately, I think it kind of distracts from the key issue of us managing our jail capacity, and making sure we have the space we need, and that the DA is prosecuting cases in a timely manner, so we don\u2019t have 1,700 inmates sitting in our jail, awaiting indictment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moody reiterated that the practice should remain a \u201cstop-gap\u201d short-term solution while Commissioners Court works toward a long-term plan to address capacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been solution agnostic in all of this. I\u2019m just saying clearly there\u2019s a problem and there\u2019s an issue here that is a county responsibility, and we should be stepping up and addressing it,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been talking about this for nearly a year now, and we haven\u2019t really put any mid- to long-term solutions on the table. And so as it stands today, I guess we\u2019re going to continue to ship hundreds of inmates to surrounding counties and spend millions of dollars doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Moody said the county must find a sustainable fix, Salazar said the reality is that outsourcing may remain necessary for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to say that this is the new normal \u2014 I\u2019m afraid that it could be, but I don\u2019t want it to be,\u201d Salazar said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bexar County continues to send inmates to jails in nearby counties \u2014 a practice Sheriff Javier Salazar says…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":366745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,24545,7288,93027,97972,14953,7245,8174,151920,177349,91445,100681,7202,7203,97974,40276,358,23383,139446,7453,3187,7815,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,20705],"class_list":{"0":"post-366744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-bcso","10":"tag-bexar-county","11":"tag-bexar-county-adult-detention-center","12":"tag-bexar-county-budget","13":"tag-bexar-county-commissioners-court","14":"tag-bexar-county-jail","15":"tag-bexar-county-sheriffs-office","16":"tag-commisioners-court","17":"tag-commissioner-grant-moody","18":"tag-grant-moody","19":"tag-javier-salazar","20":"tag-san-antonio","21":"tag-sanantonio","22":"tag-sheriff-javier-salazar","23":"tag-sheriffs","24":"tag-texas","25":"tag-texas-commission-on-jail-standards","26":"tag-texas-department-of-criminal-justice","27":"tag-top-story","28":"tag-tx","29":"tag-typedaily","30":"tag-united-states","31":"tag-united-states-of-america","32":"tag-unitedstates","33":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","34":"tag-us","35":"tag-usa","36":"tag-wc-750-1000"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366744","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=366744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}