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

The Detention Center

The county publishes no formal name for this facility.

Operated byNot found — Kent County appears to operate no jail
County publishes a jail nameNo — the Sheriff page is a name, address and phone number with no jail content
Not a TCJS facilityKent County has no row in the TCJS Inmate Population Report (Aug 2026)
kentcountysherifftx.comA site at this domain carries pages titled "Inmate Housing & Facilities" and "Kent County Inmate Search", but its other pages are generic statewide lookup content and it is not linked from the county site as an official page; not relied on here
What was triedhttps://www.co.kent.tx.us/page/kent.Sheriff ; https://www.co.kent.tx.us/page/kent.Home ; https://www.co.kent.tx.us/page/kent.Agendas.Minutes ; https://www.co.kent.tx.us/page/kent.FiscalYear2026-2027 ; https://kentcountysherifftx.com/ ; 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 Kent 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 William Scogin

Published as"Sheriff William Scogin"
Address227 S. Main Street / P.O. Box 7, Jayton, TX 79528
Phone(806) 237-3801
Fax(806) 237-3306
Email domainsheriff@kentcountysherifftx.com — the county page links this address

Still needed

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

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

The Judges

Kent County publishes no Justice of the Peace page and no JP name anywhere in its site navigation — that is a real gap, because in Texas the JP is normally the magistrate who sets bond at first appearance. The 39th District Judge sits in Haskell (1 Avenue D, Haskell, TX 79521).

County Judge

The Honorable Layne Coulter

District Court (39th Judicial District)

The Honorable Shane Hadaway

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

Kent County has no county jail: it does not appear in the TCJS Inmate Population Report, and the county site never mentions one.
The Agendas page is genuinely current — commissioners-court agendas are posted through 24 Aug 2026 — but they are agendas, not minutes.
Budget check counted on the Fiscal Year 2026-2027 page, which posts the Kent County Proposed Budget 2026/2027. That PDF is a scanned image with no extractable text, so a sheriff/jail line item could not be verified.
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 Turney Coulter, Pct. 2 Ray Hall, Pct. 3 Debbie Myers, Pct. 4 Robert Graham; County Judge Layne Coulter. The county publishes no single Commissioners Court page — only four separate precinct pages.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Kent 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