The Detention Center
Hardin County Jail
- Operated byHardin County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes a jail nameYes — "Hardin County Jail" with its own Jail Information section on the Sheriff's Office page
- Jail general information409-246-5105 (Jail Desk Officer)
- Visitation booking409-246-5249, 1:00-4:00 pm or 7:00-9:00 pm any day except Thursdays
- Inmate rosterPublished at http://98.6.4.245/dcn/ — a bare IP address, not a county domain
- Commissary vendorTiger Commissary (orders.tigercommissary.com) for deposits and for shipping items to inmates; no rates published
- Bond guidanceThe jail accepts fines and cash bonds by cashier's cheque or money order in the exact amount only; no cash, no change; surety bonds through a local bonding company, which the county will not recommend
- Beds and population, 2026-08176 people held in 196 rated beds
Source: Hardin County — Sheriff's Office · 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
- Beds196 rated capacity (TCJS Inmate Population Report, 1 August 2026; 176 held, 89.8% of capacity)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Mark Davis
- OfficeHardin County Sheriff's Office
- Address300 West Monroe Street, PO Box 1990, Kountze, Texas 77625
- Phone(409) 246-5100
- Emailmark.davis@hardincountytx.gov
- Signs asSheriff Mark L. Davis
- Corrections commandChief Deputy Scott Delacerda, Corrections & Training — 409-246-5246
- Staffing79 full-time employees, including 36 peace officers; about 105 with volunteers
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Hardin County — Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
Hardin County has six Justice of the Peace precincts, the most in this group, and no County Court at Law — the County Judge sits as the constitutional county court and the county publishes its criminal, civil and probate dockets separately. Precincts 1, 2, 3 and 5 publish remote video stream links. The Justice of the Peace page quotes Canon 3 of the Code of Judicial Conduct on ex parte communication, but publishes no bond schedule.
County Judge
- Wayne McDaniel
District Courts
- Earl Stover, III (88th)
- Steven Thomas (356th)
Justices of the Peace
- Robert Ward Jr. (Pct. 1)
- Charles Brewer (Pct. 2)
- Rod Ousley (Pct. 3)
- Mark Ames (Pct. 4)
- Melissa Minton (Pct. 5)
- Catherine Brown (Pct. 6)
- 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
- Hardin County publishes more about its jail than any other county in this group: a named facility, a live inmate roster, visitation rules, and plain guidance on how fines and cash bonds may be paid. It is the only county here that passes the bond guidance check.
- The roster link points at a bare IP address, http://98.6.4.245/dcn/, rather than a county domain. The page responds, but nothing about the address identifies it as belonging to Hardin County, and it carries no certificate.
- The address the Texas Association of Counties publishes for Hardin County, https://www.co.hardin.tx.us/, is broken: every /page/ URL on that host returns the identical home page shell, so no department content can be reached there. The working site is https://www.hardincountytx.gov/, which serves the same navigation with real content behind it.
- Deposits and inmate purchases run through Tiger Commissary, but no commissary prices, deposit fees or telephone rates are published.
- Adopted budgets are published from FY2017 through FY2026, with proposed budgets, debt transparency, audit reports and treasurer reports on separate pages.
- The jail held 176 of 196 rated beds on 1 August 2026 — just under 90 per cent of capacity, the second most crowded in this group after Grayson.
- Hardin 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. L.W. Cooper Jr. (Pct. 1), Chris Kirkendall (Pct. 2), Amanda Young (Pct. 3), Ernie Koch (Pct. 4).
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
7 people have died in the Hardin County jail 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 Hardin 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