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

The Detention Center

Smith County Jail

Operated bySmith County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameYes — "Smith County Jail", plus "Central Jail" and "Low Risk Facility" on the Sheriff's Office history page
FacilitiesCentral Jail; Low Risk / Medium Risk Facility; courthouse trusty floor — three facilities
Low Risk Facility address2811 Public Road, Tyler, Texas (published on the county's Jail Information page)
Total published capacity755 (276 Central + 432 Low/Medium Risk + 47 courthouse trusty floor)
Bond deskPre-Trial Release Office, 903-590-2620
What was triedhttps://www.smithcountysheriff.com/ ; https://www.smithcountysheriff.com/about/history-of-the-smith-county-jail/ ; https://www.smith-county.com/372/Jail-Information ; https://www.smith-county.com/250/Bond-Release ; https://www.smithcountysheriff.com/inmate-visitation
Beds and population, 2026-08876 people held in 1,149 rated beds

Source: Smith County Sheriff's Office — History of the Smith County Jail · checked 2026-08-22

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓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
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Smith 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 builtCentral Jail 1986 (106,000 sq ft, designed for 276 inmates); Low Risk Facility 1989
Original costNot found
Paid for byVoters approved an approximately $33 million expansion package in 2011, after bond referendums failed in 2006, 2007 and 2008
Beds755 total — Central Jail 276, Low Risk / Medium Risk 432, courthouse trusty floor 47

Since then

1894 — a second story added to the 1881 jail, doubling capacity
1916 — the 1881 jail replaced
1994 — medium-risk addition to the 1989 Low Risk Facility
2011 — approximately $33 million expansion package approved by voters

The Sheriff

Sheriff Larry R. Smith

Published as"Sheriff Larry R. Smith" on the Sheriff's Office site
Sheriff's Office address227 N Spring Avenue, Tyler, TX 75702
Office phone903-590-2661
Jail inmate information line903-590-2800
NoteStill in office as of August 2026; announced a re-election bid in May 2026

Still needed

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

Source: Smith County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-22

The Judges

The department pages at /267/Justices-of-the-Peace and /268/District-Court-Judges list the courts but print no judges' names; the names above come from the county's own staff directory at /directory.aspx, which tags each person with their court.

County Judge

Neal Franklin

County Courts at Law

Jason Ellis (County Court-at-Law)
Sara Maynard (County Court at Law 2)
Clay White (County Court at Law 3)

District Courts

Kerry L. Russell (7th District Court)
Reeve Jackson (114th District Court)
Debby Gunter (241st District Court)
Robert Wilson (321st District Court)
Taylor B. Heaton (475th District Court)

Justices of the Peace

Derrick Choice (Pct. 1)
Andy Dunklin (Pct. 2)
James Meredith (Pct. 3)
Curtis Wulf (Pct. 4)
Danny Brown (Pct. 5)

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

Best-documented jail history in this group: the Sheriff's Office publishes a facility history back to an 1881 jail built by Houston architect Eugene T. Heiner and builder Henry Kane, which later became the Lewis Hotel until 1986.
The county's own history page states the county was spending roughly $2.3 million a year transferring inmates out because of overcrowding before the 2011 expansion vote.
Roster scored 'no': the Sheriff's Office "Inmate Search" link goes to https://odysseypa.smith-county.com/PublicAccess/default.aspx, a Tyler Odyssey court-records portal, not a live in-custody roster. The portal did not respond when checked on 22 August 2026. smithcountyjailtx.org, which does publish bed figures, states on its own page that it "is a privately owned website and is not owned and operated by any state government organization" — not a county source.
Budget check verified: the county's FY2021 Adopted Budget (https://www.smith-county.com/Archive/ViewFile/Item/50) carries both a Sheriff department (119 FTE) and Jail Operations (258 FTE) under Corrections & Rehabilitation, about $21.88 million of a $111.3 million budget. Current budgets are served through a Laserfiche portal linked from /470/County-Budgets.
Fees scored 'no': the Sheriff's Office visitation page routes families to Jail ATM for video calls and commissary and to NCIC for phone service, but publishes no prices for either.
The county's /372/Jail-Information page carries only visitation hours and a visitor dress code — no capacity, population, rates or contracts.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Christina Drewry, Precinct 2 John Moore, Precinct 3 J Scott Herod, Precinct 4 Ralph Caraway Sr.; County Judge Neal Franklin. Court meets Tuesdays at 9:30 am.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

28 people have died in the Smith County jail since 2017.

4 by suicide

9 illness or medical

28 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them19 of 28

Deaths within the first week of arriving9

Most recent death on the state's record2024-11-12

People held, 2026-08876 in 1,149 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them75.9%

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 Smith 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