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

The Detention Center

Harris County Jail

Operated byHarris County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameYes — the Find Someone in Jail page heads a table "Harris County Jail Facilities"
Facilities listed700 N. San Jacinto (JA14); 701 or 711 N. San Jacinto (JA07); 1307 Baker Street (JA04); 1200 Baker Street (JA09) — all Houston 77002
Outsource facilities listedLaSalle Correctional Center, Olla LA (XL55/XL56); LaSalle – Jefferson County Downtown Jail, Beaumont (X281/X282/X283); Tallahatchie County Correctional, Tutwiler MS (CT55/CT56); LaSalle – Natchitoches Parish Detention Center, LA (NP55/NP56/NP57)
Jail phone contactIn-person only for the four county facilities; outsource facilities list phone numbers
What was triedhttps://harriscountyso.org/JailInfo/Default ; https://harriscountyso.org/JailInfo/FindSomeoneInJail ; https://harriscountyso.org/JailInfo/InmateInfoPhonecalls ; https://harriscountyso.org/JailInfo/inmateinfoinmatetrustfund ; https://harriscountyso.org/AboutUs/HCSOReports
Beds and population, 2026-087,118 people held in 10,466 rated beds

Source: HCSO — Find Someone in Jail · checked 2026-08-22

Transparency rating

5/10Partial

✓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
✗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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Harris 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
Beds10,466 rated capacity — Texas Commission on Jail Standards population report dated 1 August 2026; the county itself publishes no bed count

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Ed Gonzalez

Published as"Sheriff Ed Gonzalez"
Elected30th Sheriff of Harris County, November 2016; third term after re-election November 2024
Agency sizeNearly 5,100 employees; largest sheriff's office in Texas
Headquarters1200 Baker Street, Houston, TX
Non-emergency(713) 221-6000
Incarcerated person information(713) 755-5300

Still needed

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

Source: Harris County Sheriff's Office — home page · checked 2026-08-22

The Judges

Harris County also has District Civil, District Criminal, District Family and District Juvenile courts (listed at http://www.justex.net/), County Civil Courts at Law (http://www.ccl.hctx.net/civil/) and Probate Courts (https://probate.harriscountytx.gov/Pages/default.aspx); those benches are not enumerated here. In Texas the Justices of the Peace are the magistrates who set bond at first appearance; Harris County also runs magistration through the Joint Processing Center.

County Judge

Lina Hidalgo

County Criminal Courts at Law

Alex Salgado (Court 1)
Paula Goodhart (Court 2)
Leslie R. Johnson (Court 3)
Shannon Baldwin (Court 4)
David M. Fleischer (Court 5)
Kelley Andrews (Court 6)
Andrew A. Wright (Court 7)
Erika Ramirez (Court 8)
Toria J. Finch (Court 9)
Juanita A. Jackson (Court 10)
Sedrick T. Walker, II (Court 11)
Ashley Guice (Court 12)
Raul Rodriguez (Court 13)
Jessica N. Padilla (Court 14)
Tonya Jones (Court 15)
Linda Garcia (Court 16)

Justices of the Peace

Eric William Carter (Pct. 1, Place 1)
Steve Duble (Pct. 1, Place 2)
Jo Ann Delgado (Pct. 2, Place 1)
Dolores Lozano (Pct. 2, Place 2)
Joe Stephens (Pct. 3, Place 1)
Lucia Bates (Pct. 3, Place 2)
Lincoln Goodwin (Pct. 4, Place 1)
Laryssa Korduba (Pct. 4, Place 2)
James Lombardino (Pct. 5, Place 1)
Bob Wolfe (Pct. 5, Place 2)
Victor Treviño III (Pct. 6, Place 1)
Angela D. Rodriguez (Pct. 6, Place 2)
Wanda E. Adams (Pct. 7, Place 1)
Sharon M. Burney (Pct. 7, Place 2)
Holly Williamson (Pct. 8, Place 1)
Louie Ditta (Pct. 8, Place 2)

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

Best-documented jail in this group. HCSO publishes two PREA auditor's summary reports on its own site: a 2019 audit of the Joint Processing Center (auditor Ian Rachal, 26–28 Aug 2019) and a 2017 audit of 1200 Baker Street (https://harriscountyso.org/documents/JailInfo/HCSO_PREA_Audit_Report2019.pdf).
The county's Office of County Administration runs a public Harris County Jail Population Dashboard at https://charts.hctx.net/jailpop/App/JailPopCurrent and publishes standing "Harris County Jail Updates" reports. The 18 September 2025 update records 8,793 people in custody on 9 Sept 2025 (7,060 in HCSO facilities, 1,388 in processing, 341 outsourced, 4 in hospital), down from a fiscal-year high of 9,905 on 2 Feb 2025, with 219 people held 1,000 days or longer (https://oca.harriscountytx.gov/Portals/oca/Documents/Reports/JIT/FY25%20Year%20End%20Jail%20Update_Finalrevised091925.pdf).
Scored 'capacity' no: the county publishes population but no rated bed count of its own.
The county names the out-of-county and out-of-state facilities it outsources people to, but publishes no contract or per-diem rate, so 'contracts' is no.
Phone service is Securus for the county jail and Correct Solutions Group / Smart Communications for the outsourced facilities; the county publishes no per-minute rates, so 'fees' is no.
No page on harriscountyso.org or harriscountytx.gov was found publishing deaths in custody; press releases are distributed through a Google Doc rather than a custodial-death page.
Harris County is not on the TCJS non-compliant jails list as of August 2026 (https://www.tcjs.state.tx.us/non-compliant-jails/).
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Rodney Ellis, Precinct 2 Adrian Garcia, Precinct 3 Tom S. Ramsey, Precinct 4 Lesley Briones; County Judge Lina Hidalgo.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

154 people have died in the Harris County jail since 2016.

11 by suicide

85 illness or medical

154 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them137 of 154

Deaths within the first week of arriving39

Most recent death on the state's record2026-01-14

People held, 2026-087,118 in 10,466 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them80.3%

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 Harris 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