The Detention Center
The county publishes no formal name for this facility.
- Operated byNone — Hartley County operates no jail
- County publishes a jail nameNo — neither the county site nor the Sheriff's Office site mentions a jail at all
- State recordThe Texas Commission on Jail Standards population report lists the county as "Hartley (no jail)" and records "not required to report" for contract and housed-elsewhere inmates
- Where prisoners are heldNot found — the county publishes nothing on where people it arrests are booked
- What was triedhttps://www.co.hartley.tx.us/page/hartley.Sheriff ; https://www.co.hartley.tx.us/page/hartley.HCSOForms ; https://www.co.hartley.tx.us/page/hartley.contact ; https://hartleycountysheriff.org/
Source: TCJS — County Jail Population report, 1 August 2026 · 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 applicable — no county jail
- Original costNot applicable — no county jail
- Paid for byNot applicable — no county jail
- Beds0 — TCJS lists "Hartley (no jail)"
Since then
- Not applicable — no county jail
The Sheriff
Sheriff Chanze Fowler
- Published as"Hartley County Sheriff Chanze Fowler"
- Chief DeputySteven Yeager
- Mailing addressPO Box 89, Channing, TX 79018 (office 900 Main Street)
- Phone806-235-3142; fax 806-235-2003
- Separate office sitehttps://hartleycountysheriff.org/
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Hartley County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
Hartley County has one county-wide Justice of the Peace and no County Court at Law. Judge Camilla Green won the March 3, 2026 Republican primary and was appointed by Commissioners' Court to fill the unexpired term of retired Judge Ronnie Gordon; the county's Contact page still listed Ronnie Gordon as County Judge when checked on 22 August 2026.
County Judge
- Camilla Green
District Court
- Kimberly L. (Kim) Allen (69th Judicial District — Moore, Dallam, Hartley, Sherman Counties)
Justice of the Peace
- Beth Bezner Moore (county-wide)
- 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 →
Notes on the record
- Hartley County runs no jail, so nine of the ten checks are structurally 'no' rather than a transparency failure. The one real finding is that the county publishes nothing about where the people its deputies arrest are actually held.
- The county publishes adopted budgets back to FY2016-2017 and a separate 2026-2027 proposed budget spreadsheet.
- The Sheriff's Office page carries no sheriff's name in its main text; the name appears only in a staff card lower on the page and on the county Contact page.
- Hartley County does not appear on the TCJS non-compliant jails list as of August 2026.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. The Contact page lists Commissioner Prct #1 Kent Gordon, #2 David Spinhirne, #3 Chad Hicks, #4 Butch Owens.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Hartley 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