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

The Detention Center

Hemphill County Jail

Operated byHemphill County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameYes — the Sheriff page links "Hemphill County Jail Visitation Hours and Rules" and the PDF is headed "Hemphill County Jail Visitation"
VisitationThursdays 5:30–7:30 p.m.; Sundays 12:30–4:30 p.m.; photo ID required for visitors 17 and older
Roster"HCSO Jail Roster" links to a Kologik public jail roster at https://jailroster.kologik.com/?_TX1060000
Phone and commissaryCity Tele Coin is named as the inmate commissary and phone provider, but no rates are published
What was triedhttps://www.co.hemphill.tx.us/page/hemphill.Sheriff ; https://www.co.hemphill.tx.us/upload/page/7678/Hemphill%20County%20Jail%20-%20Visitation%20Hours%20and%20Rules.pdf ; https://www.co.hemphill.tx.us/page/hemphill.Budgets ; https://www.co.hemphill.tx.us/page/hemphill.Public.Notices
Beds and population, 2026-085 people held in 18 rated beds

Source: Hemphill County Jail — Visitation Hours and Rules (PDF) · checked 2026-08-22

Transparency rating

3/10Closed

✓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 — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Hemphill 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
Beds18 rated capacity — TCJS population report, 1 August 2026; the county publishes no bed count

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Brent Clapp

Published as"Sheriff Brent Clapp"
Address401 Purcell, Canadian, TX 79014
Phone806-323-5326; fax 806-323-8355
Courthouse400 Main Street, Canadian, TX 79014

Still needed

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

Source: Hemphill County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22

The Judges

Hemphill County has no County Court at Law. The 31st District Court publishes local rules, a standing order in tax cases and an order appointing an associate judge.

County Judge

Lisa Johnson

District Court

Steven Emmert (31st Judicial District — Hemphill, Lipscomb, Wheeler and other counties)

Justice of the Peace

Jay Moseley

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 smallest jail in this group: TCJS records a capacity of 18.
'roster' scored yes because the Sheriff's page publishes a direct "HCSO Jail Roster" link to a public jail roster application (Kologik). The roster renders through JavaScript, so its contents could not be read from a plain fetch.
The Sheriff's page posts a "2025 Approved Bail Bond Companies" PDF, which is a list of bondsmen rather than guidance on how to post a bond, so 'bond_info' is no.
Budget check: adopted budgets 2019-2020 through 2025-2026 are published, and a 2026-2027 proposed budget is linked from the home page, but the 2025-2026 PDF is a 75-page scanned image with no extractable text, so the jail line items could not be machine-verified.
Hemphill County is not on the TCJS non-compliant jails list as of August 2026.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Dawn E. Webb, Precinct 2 Tim Alexander, Precinct 3 Dale Schafer, Precinct 4 Nicholas Thomas; County Judge Lisa Johnson.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

No death in the Hemphill County jail appears on the state's record since 2016.

0 by suicide

0 illness or medical

0 deaths in all, 2016 onward

People held, 2026-085 in 18 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them100.0%

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 Hemphill 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