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

The Detention Center

The county publishes no formal name for this facility.

Operated byHale County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameNo — the site has a "Sheriff/Jail" section and a "Jail" sub-page, but no facility name is given
Jail phone(806) 293-5377
Jail fax(806) 291-8029
Jail page contentThe Jail page is empty apart from navigation
What was triedhttps://www.halecounty.org/county_offices/sheriff_jail.php ; /county_offices/jail/index.php ; /county_offices/jail/jail_policies.php ; /county_offices/jail/downloadable_forms.php
Beds and population, 2026-08105 people held in 190 rated beds

Source: Hale County — Sheriff/Jail · 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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Hale 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
Beds190 rated capacity (TCJS Inmate Population Report, 1 August 2026; 111 held, 58.4% of capacity)

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff David Cochran

OfficeHale County Sheriff's Office
Address1900 S. Columbia Street, Plainview, Texas 79072
Phone(806) 296-2724
Fax(806) 296-5725
Contact listedEllen Burtnett

Still needed

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

Source: Hale County — Sheriff/Jail · checked 2026-08-22

The Judges

Hale County has no County Court at Law; the County Judge sits as the constitutional county court. The county's Courts index lists only Justice of the Peace Precincts 1 and 3 — no page exists for Precincts 2 or 4. The 64th and 242nd District Courts are shared with Castro and Swisher Counties and maintain their own websites, 64thcourt.com and 242ndcourt.com, which the county links to.

County Judge

David Mull

District Courts

Danah Zirpoli (64th)
Kregg Hukill (242nd)

Justices of the Peace

Sheron Collins (Pct. 1)
Karen Davis (Pct. 3)

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 county's Jail Policies page was published but never filled in: it lists four documents named "SO - POLICY 1.pdf" through "SO - POLICY 4.pdf", each described as "This is a Policy Document Test". These placeholder entries are the whole of Hale County's published jail policy.
The Jail sub-page itself contains no content at all beyond site navigation. The only jail facts the county publishes are a phone number and a fax number on the Sheriff/Jail page.
Each commissioner's page opens in the first person — "I'm the Commissioner for Precinct 1" — and the commissioner is named only further down the page; Precinct 4's name appears earliest.
County budgets are published for 2014 through 2026.
Commissioners Court agendas and minutes are published by the County Clerk, minutes by year.
Hale County does not appear on the Texas Commission on Jail Standards non-compliant jails list checked 22 August 2026 (https://www.tcjs.state.tx.us/non-compliant-jails/).
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Dan Schafer (Pct. 1), Jerry Bright (Pct. 2), Tim Abel (Pct. 3), Benny Cantwell (Pct. 4).
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

2 people have died in the Hale County jail since 2021.

1 by suicide

0 illness or medical

2 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them2 of 2

Deaths within the first week of arriving1

Most recent death on the state's record2025-04-07

People held, 2026-08105 in 190 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them79.0%

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 Hale 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