The Detention Center
Hill County Jail
- Operated byHill County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes a jail nameYes — the county has a dedicated "County Jail" page in its main menu and the mail address on it reads "Hill County Jail, TX"
- Inmate mailRouted to a third-party processor at P.O. Box 16120, Jonesboro, AR 72410; the page warns that processed mail is destroyed and not returned
- Money and messaginghttps://csgpay.com/ for inmate accounts and https://deposits.jailatm.com/webdeposits/ for tablet messaging — no prices published
- VisitationPublished slot schedule by housing unit (A1, A2, H1/H2, I1, I2, B1/B2, C1/C2, D1/D2, E1/E2, J1/J2, Trustee, male and female single cells) on Mondays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays; 30 minutes maximum, two visitors at a time
- What was triedhttps://www.co.hill.tx.us/page/hill.CountyJail ; https://www.co.hill.tx.us/page/hill.Sheriff ; https://www.co.hill.tx.us/page/hill.Budgets ; https://www.co.hill.tx.us/page/hill.SexOffenderReg
- Beds and population, 2026-0893 people held in 203 rated beds
Source: Hill County — County Jail · checked 2026-08-22
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗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 found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds203 rated capacity — TCJS population report, 1 August 2026; the county publishes no bed count
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Hunter Barnes
- Published as"Sheriff Hunter Barnes"
- Address406 Hall Street, Hillsboro, TX
- Phone254-582-5313
- Emailsheriff@co.hill.tx.us
- Jailer pay publishedJailer $48,889.57 to $59,430.18; Deputy Sheriff $62,386.69 to $75,840.96; Dispatcher $47,454.16 to $57,673.41
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Hill County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
The 66th District Court publishes a "Standing Order Regarding defendant's bail" (https://www.co.hill.tx.us/upload/page/7618/docs/2025/Standing Order Regarding Bail.pdf) and streams proceedings on YouTube; the County Court at Law also streams proceedings.
County Judge
- Shane Brassell
County Court at Law
- Matt Crain
District Court
- Justin Lewis (66th Judicial District)
Justices of the Peace
- Doyle "Trey" Jetton (Pct. 1)
- Mark Hammonds (Pct. 2)
- Shannon Skilling (Pct. 3)
- Charles Jones (Pct. 4)
- 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
- Hill County is one of only two counties in this group (with Hidalgo) that gives the jail its own top-level menu item on the county website.
- The jail page routes all non-legal inmate mail to a scanning contractor in Jonesboro, Arkansas and states that originals — including photographs — are destroyed after scanning and will not be returned or reimbursed.
- 'fees' is no: the page names csgpay.com and jailatm.com for deposits and tablet messaging but publishes no phone, video-visit or commissary prices.
- Budget check: adopted budgets FY2009 through FY2026 are published, but the FY26 PDF is a 135-page scanned image with no extractable text, so the jail line items could not be machine-verified.
- Commissioners Court minutes are published meeting-by-meeting back to at least 2025, one of the fuller minutes archives in this group.
- Hill County is not on the TCJS non-compliant jails list as of August 2026.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Jim Holcomb, Precinct 2 Larry Crumpton, Precinct 3 Martin Dudik, Precinct 4 Martin Lake; County Judge Shane Brassell.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
2 people have died in the Hill County jail since 2019.
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 Hill 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