The Detention Center
The county publishes no formal name for this facility.
- Operated byThis county has no jail
- County publishes a jail nameNo
- No jail department in the budgetThe FY2025-2026 adopted budget's table of contents lists County Judge, County and District Clerk, Non-Departmental, Justice of the Peace, County Attorney, County Treasurer, Tax Assessor/Collector, County Buildings Operations, Nursing Home Operations, EMS Operations, Family Clinic, County Sheriff, County Agent and Trapper Expense — there is no jail line
- Sheriff page contentName, PO box, one phone, one email, a VINELink link and a MissingKids link
- What was triedhttps://www.sterlingcotx.gov/page/Sheriff ; https://www.sterlingcotx.gov/page/Budgets ; https://www.sterlingcotx.gov/page/Agendas ; https://www.sterlingcotx.gov/page/Commissioners.Court ; https://www.sterlingcotx.gov/page/Justice
- What the state reportsThe Texas Commission on Jail Standards lists no county jail here.
Source: Sterling County, Texas — County 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
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 Russell Irby
- Published as"Sheriff Russell Irby"
- Mailing addressBox 928, Sterling City, TX 76951
- Phone325-378-4771
- Emailrussell.irby@co.sterling.tx.us
- Noteco.sterling.tx.us now 302-redirects to sterlingcotx.gov
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Sterling County, Texas — County Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
The 51st District Court is administered from Tom Green County — all its staff emails are @co.tom-green.tx.us and its calendar is posted at tomgreencountytx.gov.
County Judge
- Belinda Counts
District Court (51st Judicial District)
- Carmen Symes Dusek
Justice of the Peace
- Melinda Martinez
- 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 word "jail" does not appear anywhere on sterlingcotx.gov, and the adopted budget has no jail department. Sterling County is the one county in this group that publishes no evidence of operating a jail at all.
- Budget check verified by OCR: the FY2025-2026 Adopted Budget (https://www.sterlingcotx.gov/upload/page/0071/2025/2025-2026 Adopted Budget.pdf) is a 36-page scan with no machine-readable text; its table of contents, read as an image, includes a "County Sheriff" department. Scored 'yes' on the sheriff line only.
- The same budget's cover page records the tax-rate vote: Copeland, Michulka and Stewart aye, Judge Counts aye, Tommy Wright Jr. absent, and total county debt secured by property taxes of $1,584,057 (GO Bond and Tax Note).
- The Sheriff page's only custody link is VINELink, the statewide victim-notification service.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Ross Copeland, Precinct 2 Edward Michulka, Jr., Precinct 3 Tommy Wright Jr., Precinct 4 Reed Stewart; County Judge Belinda S. Counts. Regular meetings 9:00 am on the second Monday of every month.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Sterling 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