The Detention Center
San Jacinto County Jail
- Operated bySan Jacinto County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes a jail nameYes — the NCIC inmate-mail notice hosted on the county site repeatedly names the "San Jacinto County Jail" and the "San Jacinto County Jail Facility"
- Budget calls it"DETENTION CENTER" (General Fund department 0444)
- Sheriff's Office address75 W. Cedar Avenue, Coldspring, TX 77331
- Inmate mailScanned off-site: all non-legal mail goes to PO Box 591, Longview, TX 75606 and the paper is destroyed after scanning
- Electronic message rates$0.25 per message, $0.35 per picture or document (NCIC)
- What was triedhttps://www.co.san-jacinto.tx.us/page/sanjacinto.Sheriff ; https://www.co.san-jacinto.tx.us/page/sanjacinto.Budgets ; https://www.co.san-jacinto.tx.us/page/sanjacinto.PublicNotices ; https://www.co.san-jacinto.tx.us/page/sanjacinto.CheckRegister
- Beds and population, 2026-0899 people held in 144 rated beds
Source: San Jacinto County — NCIC Inmate Communications notice (county-hosted PDF) · 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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds144 (rated capacity, TCJS county jail population report, 1 August 2026)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Sam Houston
- Published as"Sheriff Sam Houston, County Sheriff"
- Address75 W. Cedar Avenue, Coldspring, Texas 77331
- Phone936-653-4367
- Fax936-653-5058
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: San Jacinto County, Texas — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
Four Justices of the Peace, spread across Coldspring, Shepherd, Cleveland and Point Blank; all four pages state the court does not sit on weekends. Both district benches, the 411th and the 258th, are seated in Livingston in neighbouring Polk County and hear San Jacinto cases at the Coldspring courthouse.
County Judge
- Fritz Faulkner
County Court
- Fritz Faulkner
District Court (411th Judicial District)
- John Wells
District Court (258th Judicial District)
- Travis E. Kitchens, Jr.
Justices of the Peace
- Tony Sewell (Pct. 1)
- Harris Blanchette (Pct. 2)
- Randy Ellisor (Pct. 3)
- Kim Webb (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
- The detention budget is real and specific. OCR of the 197-page Approved FY2025-2026 Budget (https://www.co.san-jacinto.tx.us/upload/page/6913/Approved SJC FY25-26 Budget.pdf) gives Department 0444 DETENTION CENTER a 2025-2026 total of $2,579,375.74, alongside Department 0443 SHERIFF OFFICE at $3,902,353.32. The same budget carries Department 0490 SCAAP - CORRECTIONAL FUND.
- The budget PDF is a rotated scan with no text layer; the figures above were read by rotating each page 270 degrees before OCR.
- The fees check fails. The county publishes NCIC's electronic-message prices ($0.25 a message, $0.35 a picture) but no phone rate, no video visit rate and no commissary price list.
- TCJS recorded 22 contract inmates held for other agencies in the San Jacinto jail on 1 August 2026. No contract and no per-diem rate is published on the county site.
- The Sheriff page points to a Facebook page rather than a sheriff's office website; there is no roster, no visitation page and no bond page.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Luke Sweeney, Precinct 2 Donny Marrs, Precinct 3 Crystal Dominy, Precinct 4 Mark Nettuno; County Judge Fritz Faulkner. Commissioners Court meets at the San Jacinto County Shelter, 255 Live Oak, Coldspring.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
2 people have died in the San Jacinto County jail since 2021.
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 San Jacinto 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