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

The Detention Center

Knox County Jail

Operated byKnox County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameYes — the Sheriff page states "Knox County Jail located at 104 S. Stewart Street, Benjamin, Texas 79505 / West of Courthouse"
Address104 S. Stewart Street, Benjamin, TX 79505
Jail phone(940) 459-2041
Beds14 TCJS-rated capacity; 5 held on 1 Aug 2026 (TCJS, not the county)
Anything else publishedNothing — no roster, no capacity, no visitation, no bond or commissary information
What was triedhttps://www.knoxcountytexas.org/page/knox.sherrif ; https://www.knoxcountytexas.org/page/knox.JP ; https://www.knoxcountytexas.org/page/knox.commissioners.court ; https://www.knoxcountytexas.org/page/knox.budgets ; https://www.knoxcountytexas.org/page/knox.public.notices
Beds and population, 2026-085 people held in 14 rated beds

Source: Knox County — Sheriff · 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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Knox 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
Beds14 (TCJS-rated capacity, Aug 2026) — the county publishes no bed count

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff RYAN THRASH

Published as"Sheriff / RYAN THRASH" (in capitals on the county page)
AddressPO Box 257, Benjamin, TX 79505-0257
Sheriff's Office111 E Hayes Street, Benjamin, TX 79505
PhoneOffice (940) 459-2211; Jail (940) 459-2041
Fax(940) 459-2016
Deputies namedBridger Bush, Andrew Braden Garza

Still needed

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

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

The Judges

One Justice of the Peace serves the county, in the courthouse on the 2nd floor, with clerk Monica Meador. The 50th District Judge sits in Seymour and also covers King County. The county publishes no magistration plan.

County Judge

Don Thompson

District Court (50th Judicial District)

Judge Jennifer Habert

Justice of the Peace

Pam Oliver

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 →

Notes on the record

Knox County does the minimum well: it names the jail and gives its street address and phone number on the Sheriff page. It publishes nothing else about it.
The Budgets page (/page/knox.budgets) is empty; the Knox County Budget PDF is linked directly from the county home page. That PDF is a scanned image with no extractable text, so a sheriff/jail line item could not be verified.
No commissioners-court agendas or minutes are published; the Public Notices page renders empty.
The Sheriff page URL is misspelled by the county as "knox.sherrif".
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 Louis Baty, Pct. 2 Kim Sealy, Pct. 3 Ray Herring, Pct. 4 Nathan Urbanczyk; County Judge Don Thompson.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

No death in the Knox 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 14 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 Knox 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