Coal County, Oklahoma — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

The county publishes no formal name for this facility.

Operated byCoal County Sheriff's Office (by statute the Sheriff 'has power and authority to operate the County Jail')
Published facility nameNONE - the county publishes no jail or detention page at all
Sheriff's office address4 N Main St, Coalgate, OK 74538 (county courthouse address)
Sheriff's phone580.258.2734
Rated capacityNot found
Jail administratorNot found
Evidence a jail existsOSDH inspected a Coal County jail twice in 2025 (01/23/2025 and 10/13/2025)
State inspectionOklahoma inspects this jail. Read the state report →

Source: Coal County — official source · checked August 21, 2026

Transparency rating

0/10Closed

✗The jail is named — not published
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
✗Deaths in custody — not published
✗PREA audits — not published
✗Independent inspection — not published
✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
✗How to post bond — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Coal County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked August 21, 2026. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Jason Smith

NoteCounty page lists him as Sheriff, Republican, hometown Coalgate, 'In office since January 2, 2025'. Confirmed by the 2024 State Election Board roster ('Sheriff - Jason Smith, R, Coalgate').

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Coal County Sheriff's Office · checked August 21, 2026

The Judges

Oklahoma elects its district judges in nonpartisan elections. District and associate district judges set bond and decide who waits in this jail.

District Court, Judicial District 25

D. Mowdy - District Judge (Coal County)
Joe Trail - Associate District Judge (Coal County)

Coal County Courthouse, 4 N Main St, Coalgate, OK 74538

Still needed

The county's bond schedule
Share of the jail population held pretrial
Median time from booking to first appearance

Source: the state judiciary · checked August 21, 2026

The County Commissioners

They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.

What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
The boardBoard of County Commissioners →

Notes on the record

ZERO OF TEN disclosure checks met - the weakest transparency record in this group of ten counties. The county has a website but it contains no jail page whatsoever: no facility name, no roster, no capacity, no policies, no fees.
The county website has a BROKEN PAGE: /offices/district-judges returns a server error ('Something is not right. Our team has been notified.'), so the county's own court information is unreachable.
Sheriff's official email uses the domain coalcountyok.gov, but no site at that domain resolves - the county's actual site is the KellPro-hosted coal.okcounties.org.
The jail exists and is inspected: OSDH filed reports on 01/23/2025 and 10/13/2025. Two inspections in one year commonly indicates a follow-up re-inspection. No 2026 report was posted as of 8/21/2026.
Empty template pages: /fees returns the page frame with no fee content.
There is no combined Board of County Commissioners page - only three separate district pages (/offices/commissioner-district-1, -2, -3).

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Coal County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).

How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?

Your VOTE is POWERFUL.

The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.

The sheriff is on your ballot

The county election board runs the polling place in Coal County and prints the ballot the sheriff’s name is on. Links from the Oklahoma State Election Board and vote.gov.

Names verified August 21, 2026 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered