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

The Detention Center

The county publishes no formal name for this facility.

Operated byLynn County Sheriff's Office (inferred from the budget's JAIL department; the county publishes no jail page)
County publishes a jail nameNo — the Sheriff page never uses the word "jail"; it links only to VINELink for custody status
Only jail evidence on the county siteThe adopted budget carries a department headed JAIL with line items 100-576-5100.10 "Salaries-Jail Administra" through "Salaries-Jailer #9", plus jailer salaries under the Sheriff's Office
Sheriff's Office address810 Lockwood Street, Tahoka, TX 79373 (no separate jail address published)
What was triedhttps://www.co.lynn.tx.us/page/lynn.Sheriff ; https://www.co.lynn.tx.us/page/lynn.Home ; https://www.co.lynn.tx.us/page/lynn.Budgets ; https://www.co.lynn.tx.us/page/lynn.Agenda.Minutes
Beds and population, 2026-0842 people held in 54 rated beds

Source: Lynn County — Approved Budget 2023-2024 (PDF) · 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 Lynn 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
Beds54 rated capacity (TCJS Inmate Population Report, 1 Aug 2026); 42 held, 77.8% of capacity — not published by the county itself

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Wanda Mason

Published as"Sheriff Wanda Mason"
Address810 Lockwood Street, Tahoka, TX 79373
Phone806-561-4505; fax 806-561-4658
Published formsCitizen complaint and compliment forms in English and Spanish (2025/2026 revisions)

Still needed

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

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

The Judges

No County Court at Law. The JP page also carries an older payment instruction naming "Judge Follis" for JP #4; the current published Precinct 4 judge on the same page is Sharla Edwards, O'Donnell.

County Judge

Mike Braddock

District Court (106th Judicial District)

Reed Filley

Justices of the Peace

Christie Olivan (Pct. 1)
Sharla Edwards (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

Lynn County runs a jail — the budget funds a jail administrator and nine jailer posts — but nothing on the county website tells the public that the jail exists, where it is, or how to reach it.
The county does hold other agencies' prisoners: TCJS recorded 11 in-state contract inmates on 1 Aug 2026, and 3 Lynn inmates housed elsewhere. No contract or rate is published.
Agendas and minutes are posted regularly and are current through July 2026; the budgets page, by contrast, offers only the 2023-2024 approved budget.
TCJS does not publish a per-county inspection page or routine inspection report online; the only county-level TCJS documents found are the statewide Inmate Population Report (https://www.tcjs.state.tx.us/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/PopReportCurrent.xlsx) and the Non-Compliant Jails list (https://www.tcjs.state.tx.us/non-compliant-jails/), which did not list this county as of 22 Aug 2026.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Matt Woodley, Precinct 2 John Hawthorne, Precinct 3 Tate Gass, Precinct 4 Larry Durham; County Judge Mike Braddock.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

No death in the Lynn 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, 2026-0842 in 54 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them90.5%

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 Lynn 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