The Detention Center
Bowie County Detention Center
- Operated byBowie County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes a jail nameYes — the county's own inmate visitation form is headed 'Bi-State/Bowie County Detention Center' and directs mail to 'Bowie County Detention Center'
- Address105 West Front Street, Texarkana, TX 75501
- Former private operatorLaSalle Corrections managed the facility from 2010 and ended its contract effective 13 February 2021; the county then hired its own staff
- Inmate roster hostbccc.llhostings.com, linked from the county Sheriff's page as 'Bowie County Inmate Search'
- Beds and population, 2026-08536 people held in 921 rated beds
Source: Bowie County inmate visitation request form · checked 2026-08-22
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds921 rated capacity (TCJS population report, 1 Aug 2026)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jeff Neal
- OfficeBowie County Sheriff's Office
- Address100 North Stateline Avenue, Texarkana, TX 75570
- Phone903-798-3149
- Detention Center105 West Front Street, Texarkana, TX 75501, (903) 798-3505
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Bowie County Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
District courts are the 5th, 102nd and 202nd. JP Precinct 1 has two places, both sitting in the Bi-State Justice Building; there are also JP Precincts 2, 3 and 5.
County Judge
- Bobby Howell
County Court at Law
- Craig L. Henry
District Courts
- Bill Miller
- Jeff M. Addison
- John L. Tidwell
Justices of the Peace
- Nancy Talley
- Jay Womack
- Catie Hawkins
- Ellen Eubanks
- Susie Spellings
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-22
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 →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Commissioners: Sammy Stone (Pct 1), Tom Whitten (Pct 2), James Strain (Pct 3), and a Precinct 4 commissioner listed on the same page.
- prea marked no: the document the Sheriff's page labels 'Prea Report' is a PREA Survey of Sexual Violence — self-reported 2022 incident counts — not an audit result. It does publish an average daily inmate count of 513 for 2022 (414 men, 99 women) and 4,945 admissions.
- capacity marked no: an average daily count appears inside the PREA survey but the county publishes no bed count.
- Budget: the Financial Transparency page carries the 2026-2027 first amended proposed budget and archives of adopted budgets and financial reports; the PDFs are scanned images and OCR shows 'SHERIFF' and 'JAIL TELEPHONE INCOME' lines.
- The county also publishes a LESO (1033 military surplus) public notice on the Sheriff's page.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
19 people have died in the Bowie County jail since 2016.
Deaths: Texas Justice Initiative, the cleaned copy of the Texas Attorney General’s custodial death reports — the state’s own public index carries no cause of death and has not been refreshed since August 2025. Population: Texas Commission on Jail Standards monthly report. Counted, not estimated.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Bowie 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.
Names verified 2026-08-22 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered