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

The Detention Center

The county publishes no formal name for this facility.

Operated byNot found — King County appears to operate no jail
County publishes a jail nameNo — no jail content anywhere on the site
Not a TCJS facilityKing County has no row in the TCJS Inmate Population Report (Aug 2026)
Where prisoners goNot found — the county publishes no holding or inter-local housing arrangement
What was triedhttps://www.co.king.tx.us/page/king.Sheriff ; https://www.co.king.tx.us/page/king.Home ; https://www.co.king.tx.us/page/king.JP ; https://www.co.king.tx.us/page/king.Commissioner ; 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 King 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 Michael R. McWhirter

Published as"Sheriff Michael R. McWhirter"
AddressP. O. Box 66, Guthrie, TX 79236-0066
Phone(806) 596-4413
Fax(806) 596-4316
HoursMonday-Friday 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Jail on the pageNone — the page covers emergency numbers and estray livestock

Still needed

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

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

The Judges

The JP page is headed "Justice of Peace / Mary Ortiz" but its contact form is labelled "Contact Melody Pettiet", so the county site is internally inconsistent about who staffs that office. The 50th District Judge sits in Seymour.

County Judge

The Honorable Duane Lee Daniel

District Court (50th Judicial District)

The Honorable Jennifer A. Habert

Justice of the Peace

Mary Ortiz

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

King County has no county jail: it does not appear in the TCJS Inmate Population Report, and the county site never mentions one. King County is one of the least populous counties in Texas.
The county has no Budgets landing page; adopted and proposed budgets are linked directly from the site navigation under Financial Transparency. The FY2025-2026 Adopted Budget PDF is cited here.
No commissioners-court minutes are posted; only a Public Notice calendar.
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 Landon Lorance, Pct. 2 Chris McCauley, Pct. 3 Dwayne Green, Pct. 4 Jay Hurt; County Judge Duane Lee Daniel.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in King 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