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

The Detention Center

The county publishes no formal name for this facility.

Operated bySabine County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameNo — the Sheriff page carries no jail section at all; the only "jail" on the site is an outbound tourism link to the Sabine County Jail Museum, a historic building, not the working jail
Jail addressNot found on the county site
Sheriff's Office locationSabine County Courthouse, 201 Main St, Hemphill, TX 75948
What was triedhttps://www.co.sabine.tx.us/page/sabine.Sheriff ; https://www.co.sabine.tx.us/page/sabine.Budgets ; https://www.co.sabine.tx.us/page/sabine.PublicNotices ; https://www.co.sabine.tx.us/page/sabine.PublicDocuments ; https://www.co.sabine.tx.us/page/sabine.Commissioners.Court
Beds and population, 2026-0814 people held in 21 rated beds

Source: Sabine County, Texas — Sheriff · 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 Sabine 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
Beds21 (rated capacity, TCJS county jail population report, 1 August 2026)

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff George Griffith

Published as"Sheriff George Griffith"
Mailing addressPO Box 848, Hemphill, TX 75948
Phone409-787-2266
Fax409-787-2150

Still needed

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

Source: Sabine County, Texas — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22

The Judges

Sabine County publishes two Justice of the Peace precincts, both seated at 201 Main Street in Hemphill. The County Judge also presides over the county constitutional court. Two district benches, the 1st and the 273rd, both sit outside the county (Jasper and Center).

County Judge

Daryl Melton

County Constitutional Court

Daryl Melton

District Court (1st Judicial District)

Craig Mixson

District Court (273rd Judicial District)

James A. Payne, Jr.

Justices of the Peace

Roger Gay (Pct. 1)
Henry Alvarado (Pct. 2)

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

Sabine County's Sheriff page is the thinnest in this group: a name, a PO box, a phone, a fax, an email, and links to an app, AMBER Alerts and the DPS crime records service. Nothing about the jail.
Budget check verified by OCR of the 2024 Adopted Budget (https://www.co.sabine.tx.us/upload/page/3453/2024 Adopted Budget.pdf), a 65-page scan with no text layer. Its index lists "SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT" at pages 21-22 and a separate "SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT — CONTINUING EDUCATION"; there is no separate jail department line. 2024 is the most recent budget posted.
Commissioners Court minutes go back to 1910 on a third-party document host, sabine.easydocs.us, linked from the county's Public Documents page.
TCJS recorded 1 Sabine County inmate housed elsewhere on 1 August 2026.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Brent Cox, Precinct 2 Keith Nabours, Precinct 3 Kenneth Brodie, Precinct 4 James Lowe; County Judge Daryl Melton.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

No death in the Sabine 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, 2026-0814 in 21 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them64.3%

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 Sabine 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