Chambers County, Texas — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Chambers County Jail

Operated byChambers County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameYes — the Sheriff's Office page lists "County Jail Operations: Operating the Chambers County Jail"
Jail Division pagehttps://www.co.chambers.tx.us/177/Jail-Division
Address201 North Court, Anahuac, TX 77514 — (409) 267-2500
Inmate searchhttps://ccso.chamberstx.org/inmateSearchPage
Beds and population, 2026-08179 people held in 226 rated beds

Source: Chambers County — Jail Division · 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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Chambers County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-08-22. 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
Beds226 rated capacity (Texas Commission on Jail Standards county jail population report, 1 August 2026)

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Brian Hawthorne

TitleChambers County Sheriff
Physical address201 North Court, Anahuac, TX 77514
Mailing addressPO Box 998, Anahuac, TX 77514
Phone409-267-2500
Separate agency sitehttps://ccso.chamberstx.org/

Still needed

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

Source: Chambers County — County Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22

The Judges

Chambers County has six Justice of the Peace precincts. The county directory lists an address for Precinct 3 (9310 FM 562, Anahuac) but names no judge and no staff for it.

County Judge

Jimmy Sylvia

County Court at Law

Cindy S. Price

District Courts

Chap B. Cain, III — 253rd District
Randy McDonald — 344th District

Justices of the Peace

Celia Devillier Baker — Precinct 1
Michael W. Wheat — Precinct 2
Precinct 3 — no judge named on the county directory
Blake D. Sylvia — Precinct 4
David Hatfield — Precinct 5
Larry Cryer — Precinct 6

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 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

The sheriff's office runs a separate site (ccso.chamberstx.org) built on the OCV platform. It has Commissary, Visitation and Inmate Mail pages, but their contents load only via JavaScript and could not be read; the underlying content API returned Access Denied. Phone, video visit and commissary rates therefore could not be verified and 'fees' is scored 'no'.
The county's own Jail Division page covers visitation conduct rules and points to the sheriff's site for trust fund deposits, without publishing any rates.
TCJS rated capacity rose from 148 in 2022 to 226 by August 2026, which implies an expansion, but no county source for the expansion was found.
Chambers County's jail was over 100 percent of rated capacity in several TCJS monthly reports during 2022.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Jimmy Gore (Pct. 1), Mark Tice (Pct. 2), Tommy Hammond (Pct. 3), Ryan Dagley (Pct. 4).
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

3 people have died in the Chambers County jail since 2021.

0 by suicide

0 illness or medical

3 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them2 of 3

Deaths within the first week of arriving3

Most recent death on the state's record2025-11-16

People held, 2026-08179 in 226 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them91.1%

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 Chambers 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