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

The Detention Center

The county publishes no formal name for this facility.

Operated byNot found — Kenedy County appears to operate no jail
County publishes a jail nameNo — the word "jail" does not appear on the Sheriff page or anywhere in the site navigation
Not a TCJS facilityKenedy County has no row in the TCJS Inmate Population Report (Aug 2026), i.e. no TCJS-regulated county jail
Where prisoners goNot found — the county publishes no holding or inter-local housing arrangement
CourthouseKenedy County Courthouse, 101 East La Parra Avenue, Sarita, TX 78385; (361) 294-5224
What was triedhttps://www.kenedycountytx.gov/page/kenedy.Sheriff ; https://www.kenedycountytx.gov/page/kenedy.Home ; https://www.kenedycountytx.gov/page/kenedy.Budgets ; https://www.kenedycountytx.gov/page/kenedy.Justice ; https://www.tcjs.state.tx.us/population-reports/

Source: TCJS Inmate Population Report (current) · 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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Kenedy 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
BedsNot found — no TCJS-regulated jail in this county

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Ramon Salinas III

Published as"Sheriff Ramon Salinas III"
Address175 Cuellar Avenue / P.O. Box 10, Sarita, TX 78385
Phone361-294-5205
FaxMain 361-294-5260; Admin 361-294-5209
Jail on the pageNone — the Sheriff page says nothing about a jail

Still needed

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

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

The Judges

The county publishes its four JPs by first initial and surname only — "Judge J. Norrell", "Judge J. Miller", "Judge C. G. Schulz", "Judge P. Fain" — so no full first names are recorded here. The site's "District Court" menu contains only District Clerk and District Attorney; Kenedy County publishes no district judge. JPs are the magistrates who set bond at first appearance in Texas.

County Judge

Charles Burns

Justices of the Peace

Judge J. Norrell (Pct. 1)
Judge J. Miller (Pct. 2)
Judge C. G. Schulz (Pct. 3)
Judge P. Fain (Pct. 4)

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

Kenedy County has no county jail: it does not appear in the TCJS Inmate Population Report, and the county site never mentions one.
Budget check counted on the strength of the county's Adopted Budget page. The 2026 Adopted Budget PDF is a scanned image with no extractable text, so a sheriff/jail line item could not be verified.
No commissioners-court minutes are posted; agendas appear only as items on the Public Notice calendar under a "Comm Court Agenda" category.
TCJS publishes no county-specific inspection page or report URL. Its only county-specific PDFs are non-compliance notices, and this county is not on the Non-Compliant Jails list at https://www.tcjs.state.tx.us/non-compliant-jails/ as of 22 Aug 2026.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Pct. 1 Joe Recio, Pct. 2 Israel Vela, Jr., Pct. 3 Sarita Armstrong Hixon, Pct. 4 Jose Salazar; County Judge Charles Burns.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Kenedy 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