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

The Detention Center

The county publishes no formal name for this facility.

Operated bySomervell County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameNo — the Sheriff page says only that the office "is also responsible for operating the county jail"
Sheriff's Office / jail address750 E. Gibbs Boulevard, Glen Rose, TX 76043
Budget departmentThe county budget carries "Department: 560 - COUNTY SHERIFF" with a "Salary of Chief Jailer" and "Salaries-Jailers (49)" line; there is no separate jail department
What was triedhttps://www.somervell.co/352/Sheriff ; https://www.somervell.co/sitemap ; https://www.somervell.co/355/Financial-Transparency ; https://www.somervell.co/Archive.aspx?AMID=38 ; https://somervellsheriff.wordpress.com/staff/
Beds and population, 2026-0847 people held in 55 rated beds

Source: Somervell County, TX — 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 Somervell 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
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Alan West

Published as"Alan West, Sheriff"
Chief DeputyDwayne Griffin
Correction LieutenantTreka Laviada
Physical address750 E. Gibbs Boulevard, Glen Rose, TX 76043
Mailing addressP.O. Box 3268, Glen Rose, TX 76043
Phone254-897-2242

Still needed

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

Source: Somervell County, TX — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22

The Judges

Both district courts sit at the Guinn Justice Center in Cleburne (Johnson County) with a Somervell office at 102 NE Vine Street, Glen Rose.

County Judge

Danny L. Chambers

District Courts

Sydney Hewlett (18th District Court)
Tiffany Strother (249th District Court)

Justices of the Peace

Ronnie Webb (Pct. 1)
Scott May (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

The full site map of somervell.co (https://www.somervell.co/sitemap) has no jail page at all. The word "jail" appears once on the whole county site, in the sentence describing the Sheriff's duties.
Budget check verified: the county's PROPOSED BUDGET FISCAL YEAR ENDING 09/30/2025 (https://www.somervell.co/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/269) contains "Department: 560 - COUNTY SHERIFF" together with "Salary of Chief Jailer" and "Salaries-Jailers (49)".
The Financial Transparency page prints the headings Budgets, Tax Rates, Check Registers and Financial Reports but the documents themselves are served from Archive Center pages (AMID 38, 37, 44, 45) that render only under JavaScript.
The Sheriff page's only custody link is VINELink, the statewide victim-notification service — not a county roster, so 'roster' is no.
somervellsheriff.wordpress.com is a Sheriff's Office WordPress site (staff emails are @co.somervell.tx.us) but is not on a county domain and names no jail either.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Jeff Harris, Precinct 2 Richard Talavera, Precinct 3 Chip Joslin, Precinct 4 Wade Busch; County Judge Danny L. Chambers. The Commissioners Court page itself does not name the County Judge.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

No death in the Somervell 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, 2026-0847 in 55 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them89.4%

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 Somervell 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