The Detention Center
Orange County Correctional Facility
- Operated byOrange County Sheriff's Office (Corrections Division)
- County publishes a jail nameYes — "The Orange County Correctional Facility is the Division of the Orange County Sheriff's Office responsible for housing prisoners for all law enforcement agencies in Orange County"
- Capacity as published"approximately 350 inmates"; "the average daily population is just over 200"
- Staffing as publishedOne captain, one lieutenant, six sergeants, four corporals and around 47 staff members
- Sheriff's Office address205 S Border St., Orange, TX 77630 (no separate jail street address is published)
- What was triedhttps://www.co.orange.tx.us/ ; https://www.co.orange.tx.us/directory ; https://www.co.orange.tx.us/sitemap.xml (1,066 URLs, none for a jail page) ; https://ocsheriffsoffice.com/sitemap.xml ; https://ocsheriffsoffice.com/Corrections ; https://ocsheriffsoffice.com/CorrectionsInformation ; https://ocsheriffsoffice.com/Visitation
- Beds and population, 2026-08218 people held in 326 rated beds
Source: Orange County, Texas Sheriff's Office — Corrections · checked 2026-08-22
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓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
- Beds"approximately 350" as published by the Sheriff's Office; 326 rated capacity in the Texas Commission on Jail Standards Inmate Population Report dated 1 August 2026
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Bobby Smith
- Published as"Sheriff Bobby Smith" on the Orange County Sheriff's Office site, which the county directory's Sheriff's Office entry redirects to
- Sheriff's Office address205 S Border St., Orange, TX 77630
- Non-emergency phone(409) 883-2612
- Vidor substation(409) 769-6391
- Noteco.orange.tx.us/directory/SheriffsOffice issues a 302 redirect to ocsheriffsoffice.com; the county's own pages do not print the sheriff's name except on a campaign-finance filing page
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Orange County, Texas Sheriff's Office — Home · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
The county's Justice of the Peace index page (/justiceofthepeace) explains the court's jurisdiction but prints no names; the four names above come from the county's own per-court pages, /judgehershelstagnerjr, /judgechadjenkins, /judgejoydubose-simonton and /judgerodneyprice, each of which is headed "Justice of the Peace #1" through "#4". County Court at Law No. 2's page prints "Judge Rodney Townsend"; the county's own page slug for the same person is /rodneyatownsendjr.
County Judge
- John Gothia
County Court at Law
- Mandy White-Rogers
County Court at Law No. 2
- Rodney Townsend
128th District Court
- Courtney Arkeen
163rd District Court
- Rex Peveto
260th District Court
- Steve Parkhurst
Justices of the Peace
- Hershel Stagner, Jr. (Pct. 1)
- Chad Jenkins (Pct. 2)
- Joy Dubose-Simonton (Pct. 3)
- Rodney Price (Pct. 4)
- 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
- ocsheriffsoffice.com is treated here as a county publication: the Sheriff's Office entry in the county's own department directory (https://www.co.orange.tx.us/directory/SheriffsOffice) redirects to it.
- The capacity check is marked yes because the Corrections page publishes both a capacity figure (~350) and an average daily population ("just over 200"). Neither number is dated.
- The Corrections Information page links ten PDFs including INMATE-TELEPHONE-SYSTEM.pdf and INMATE-COMMISSARY.pdf. Both were read in full: they describe how the phone system and commissary work and set a $100 weekly commissary spending cap, but publish no phone, video-visit or commissary prices. fees is therefore no.
- The county's sitemap contains no bail or bond page, and neither county site publishes deaths in custody, PREA audits, inspection results or contracts to hold other agencies' prisoners.
- The county publishes Commissioners Court agenda and minutes pages (/commissionerscourtagendas, /commissionerscourtminutes) but both were empty when read; the working meeting record is the Commissioners Court calendar at /meetings/51/.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Members: John Gothia (County Judge), Johnny Trahan (Pct. 1), Chris Sowell (Pct. 2), Kirk Roccaforte (Pct. 3), Robert Viator (Pct. 4). Offices at 123 South 6th Street, Orange.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
3 people have died in the Orange County jail since 2017.
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 Orange 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