The Detention Center
The county publishes no formal name for this facility.
- Operated byMills County Sheriff's Office (the Sheriff's message refers to "a safe and humane correctional facility" and to jailers on staff, but the facility is never named)
- County publishes a jail nameNo. Neither the county's Sheriff page nor the Sheriff's Office site gives the facility a name; the closest is "correctional facility" in the Sheriff's message.
- Sheriff's Office / facility address2111 Priddy Rd., Goldthwaite, TX 76844
- Inmate rosterLinked from the Sheriff's Office menu as "Inmate Roster", hosted at http://findtheinmate.com/mills/
- What was triedhttps://www.millscountytx.gov/page/Sheriff ; https://www.millscountysheriff.org/ ; https://www.millscountysheriff.org/sheriffs-message ; https://www.millscountysheriff.org/faqs/index ; https://www.millscountysheriff.org/staffMembers/category/command-staff
- Beds and population, 2026-0821 people held in 39 rated beds
Source: Mills County Sheriff's Office — home · checked 2026-08-22
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗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
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
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff James Jones
- Published as"James Jones — Sheriff" on the Sheriff's Office command staff page
- Office2111 Priddy Rd., Goldthwaite, TX 76844
- Phone(325) 648-2245; fax (325) 648-3797
- County emailjames.jones@millscountytx.gov
- Chief DeputyAnthony Pool
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Mills County Sheriff's Office — Command Staff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
The county has no County Court at Law. The district court page publishes the judge's name and a Brownwood address but no district number; the number was not recorded rather than guessed.
County Judge
- Jett J. Johnson
District Court
- Mike Smith (District Court, seated at 200 S. Broadway, Suite 212, Brownwood; shared with Brown County)
Justice of the Peace
- Kim Avants
- 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
- Roster is counted "yes" because the Sheriff's Office menu carries an "Inmate Roster" item, but the list itself is hosted by a third party at http://findtheinmate.com/mills/ rather than on a county domain.
- The Sheriff's Office site has no jail page at all: no name, no address for the facility distinct from the office, no visitation page, no commissary or phone information, no bond guidance.
- Approved Commissioners' Court minutes are posted as PDFs on the Commissioners Court page itself, month by month, back several years; meetings are also streamed on a county YouTube channel.
- Budgets page carries adopted budgets back to 2012-13 plus a proposed 2026-2027 budget.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Craig Sullivan, Precinct 2 Robert Head, Precinct 3 Dale Partin, Precinct 4 Jason Williams; County Judge Jett J. Johnson. Court meets the 2nd and 4th Monday at 9:00 am.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
No death in the Mills County jail appears on the state's record since 2016.
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 Mills 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