The Detention Center
The county publishes no formal name for this facility.
- Operated byThis county has no jail
- County publishes a jail nameNo — the county site has no jail page and names no facility
- Jail statusClosed. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards 2025 Annual Jail Report lists Cottle among 22 counties with closed jails that 'opted to board their few inmates in an adjacent county'
- Boarding countyNot found — the county publishes no interlocal boarding agreement
- What was triedhttps://www.cottlecountytx.gov/page/Sheriff ; https://www.cottlecountytx.gov/page/sitemap ; https://www.cottlecountytx.gov/ ; https://www.txsheriffs.org/county_map/county/2574
- What the state reportsThe Texas Commission on Jail Standards lists no county jail here.
Source: TCJS 2025 Annual Jail Report (closed jails list, p.20) · checked 2026-08-22
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗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
- BedsNot found — no operating county jail
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Mark Box
- TitleCottle County Sheriff
- OfficeCottle County Courthouse, 815 9th Street, Paducah, TX 79248
- MailingPO Box 887, Paducah, TX 79248
- Phone806-492-3131 (non-emergency)
- Emailcottlesopubliccorrespondence@gmail.com
- NoteNamed on the county's own Sheriff page; the county moved from co.cottle.tx.us to cottlecountytx.gov
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Cottle County, Texas - Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
One countywide Justice of the Peace. The 50th District Court sits in Seymour and covers Baylor, Cottle, King and Knox counties.
County Judge
- Karl Holloway
Justice of the Peace (countywide)
- Monte Fields
50th District Court
- Jennifer Habert
- 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
- Cottle County has no jail of its own; TCJS lists it among the counties that board prisoners elsewhere. No boarding contract, per-diem rate or receiving county is published on the county site.
- Budget check marked yes because the county posts adopted and proposed county budget PDFs back to FY2014-15 on its Budgets page; the recent PDFs are scanned images with no text layer, so a sheriff/jail line item could not be text-verified.
- The county's Agendas page lists Commissioners Court agendas for 2026 and an archive for 2023-2025; no signed minutes are posted.
- Sheriffs' Association of Texas also lists Mark Box for Cottle County: https://www.txsheriffs.org/county_map/county/2574
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Court meets the 2nd and 4th Monday of each month at 9:30 a.m. Members: Arty Tucker (Pct 1), Steven Beck, Jr. (Pct 2), Harvey Truelock (Pct 3), John B. Brothers (Pct 4).
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Cottle 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