The Detention Center
Cooke County Detention Center
- Operated byCooke County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes a jail nameYes — 'Cooke County Detention Center', also called the Cooke County Jail on the same page
- Jail address300 County Road 451, Gainesville, TX 76240
- Jail phone940-665-3471
- CommandJail Administrator Chief Nathan Ervin; Jail Lieutenant Ann Yett
- Design212-bed indirect supervision facility staffed by 45 employees, four shifts
- Beds and population, 2026-08131 people held in 212 rated beds
Source: Cooke County — Jail · checked 2026-08-22
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓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
- ✗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
- Beds212 — published by the county and matching the TCJS rated capacity of 212 as of Aug. 1, 2026
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Ray Sappington
- OfficeCooke County Sheriff's Office
- Chief DeputySonny Privett
- AddressCooke County Justice Center, 300 County Road 451, Gainesville, TX 76240
- Phone940-665-3471
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Cooke County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
The county menu lists Justice of the Peace 'Precinct 1' and 'Precinct 2', though the Precinct 2 page sits at the URL cooke.Precinct4. The 235th District judge is not named on any county HTML page; the name is taken from the weekly docket PDF the county publishes.
County Judge
- John O. Roane
County Court at Law
- Andrea Townsend
Justices of the Peace
- Jody Henry (Precinct 1)
- Carroll Johnson (Precinct 2)
District Court (235th Judicial District)
- Janelle M. Haverkamp
- 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: Gary Hollowell (Pct 1), Jason Snuggs (Pct 2), Adam Arendt (Pct 3), Matt Sicking (Pct 4).
- The jail page publishes a bed count (212) but no daily population, so the capacity check fails on the population half.
- Cash bond information and payment run through Bail.Cash/CookeTX, linked from the jail page.
- The inmate communications page names vendors (CSGpay / Correct Solutions, JailATM) but publishes no call, video or commissary rates.
- Budget archive runs from FY2012-13 through the FY2027 proposed budget.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Meetings are live-streamed.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
2 people have died in the Cooke County jail since 2022.
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 Cooke 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