The Detention Center
The county publishes no formal name for this facility.
- Operated byNot stated on the county site. Freestone reports a county jail to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which is a sheriff-run facility by default under Texas law, but the county publishes no jail page.
- County publishes a jail nameNo — the Sheriff page carries no jail name, address or phone
- Jail addressNot found on the county site
- Jail phoneNot found on the county site
- What was triedhttps://www.co.freestone.tx.us/ ; https://www.co.freestone.tx.us/page/freestone.sheriff ; https://www.co.freestone.tx.us/page/sitemap (no jail, inmate, bond or commissary page exists)
- Beds and population, 2026-0829 people held in 44 rated beds
Source: Freestone County — 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
- Beds44 rated capacity (TCJS Inmate Population Report, 1 August 2026; 29 held, 66% of capacity)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jeremy Shipley
- OfficeFreestone County Sheriff's Office
- Address103 S. Keechi, Fairfield, TX 75840
- Phone903-389-3236
- Emailsheriffshipley@co.freestone.tx.us
- RecordsOpen records requests to fcsorecords@co.freestone.tx.us
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Freestone County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
Freestone County has no County Court at Law. The JP page publishes no bond or magistrate information.
County Judge
- Lloyd L. Lane
District Courts (77th)
- Roy DeFriend
District Courts (87th)
- Amy Thomas Ward
Justices of the Peace
- John K. Thorne (Pct. 1)
- James R. Lawrence (Pct. 2)
- Cinnamon Archibald (Pct. 3)
- Lisa Hendrix (Pct. 4)
- 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 publishes adopted and proposed budgets back to FY2014, which is where sheriff and jail funding appears; there is no separate detention budget page.
- The county posts Commissioners' Court video recordings and meeting dates rather than written minutes.
- Freestone County's jail was placed in non-compliance by TCJS and re-inspected on 22 October 2020; the report is a scanned image with no extractable text.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Andy Bonner (Pct. 1), Will McSwane (Pct. 2), Richard McGowan (Pct. 3), Clyde Ridge Jr. (Pct. 4).
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
3 people have died in the Freestone County jail since 2024.
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 Freestone 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