The Detention Center
The county publishes no formal name for this facility.
- Operated byDonley County Sheriff's Office (the county's sheriff page names a Jail Administrator)
- County publishes a jail nameNo - the sheriff's page names a Jail Administrator but never names the facility
- Custody statusThe county directs the public to VINELink.com
- Sheriff's Office address300 S. Jefferson, Clarendon, TX 79226
- What was triedhttps://www.co.donley.tx.us/page/Sheriff ; https://www.co.donley.tx.us/ ; https://www.co.donley.tx.us/page/Public.Notices
- Beds and population, 2026-089 people held in 20 rated beds
Source: Donley County, Texas - Sheriff · 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
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Charles "Butch" Blackburn
- OfficeDonley County Sheriff's Office
- AddressPO Box 910, 300 S. Jefferson, Clarendon, TX 79226
- Phone(806) 874-3533
- Jail AdministratorCheryl Phillips
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Donley County, Texas - Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
No County Court at Law is listed; the constitutional County Court is presided over by the County Judge.
County Judge
- John C. Howard, M.D.
Justices of the Peace
- Sarah Hatley Morgan (Precincts 1 & 2)
- Pat White (Precincts 3 & 4)
100th Judicial District Court
- Dale A. Rabe Jr.
- 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 county posts approved budgets back to 2000-2001 plus proposed budgets, check registers and treasurer reports under Financial Transparency.
- Commissioners Court agendas are posted under Public Notices & Agendas (https://www.co.donley.tx.us/page/Public.Notices); minutes and a minutes archive are posted separately.
- No county-specific TCJS inspection page or report could be found.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Del Essary, Precinct 2 Daniel Ford, Precinct 3 Greg Wootten, Precinct 4 Dan Sawyer; County Judge John Howard. Meets the second Monday of each month at 9 a.m.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
No death in the Donley County jail appears on the state's record 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 Donley 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