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

The Detention Center

The county publishes no formal name for this facility.

Operated bySutton County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameNo — the Sheriff page never mentions a jail; the only acknowledgement is a budget department
Budget departmentDEPT NO: 512 — JAIL, with lines for JAILERS, PART TIME JAILER, JAIL MANGEMENT SYSTEM [sic] and JAILERS SCHOOL
Holds other agencies' prisonersThe budget carries revenue lines "SHERIFF/ OTHER COUNTIES" and "OTHER COUNTIES-SHERIFF REIMBUS" — no rate is published
Old jailThe budget carries a "RENT-OLD JAIL BLDG" line
What was triedhttps://www.co.sutton.tx.us/page/sutton.Sheriff ; https://www.co.sutton.tx.us/page/sutton.Budgets ; https://www.co.sutton.tx.us/page/sutton.Commissioners.Court ; https://www.co.sutton.tx.us/page/sutton.JP
Beds and population, 2026-0811 people held in 28 rated beds

Source: Sutton County — FY2025-2026 Adopted Budget · 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 Sutton 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 DuWayne Castro

Published as"Sheriff DuWayne Castro" on the Sheriff page; a county PDF signs it "Du Wayne Castro Sheriff"
Chief DeputyJon Gann (named in the county's Notice of Estray PDF)
Address401 E. Oak Street, Sonora, Texas 76950
Phone325-387-2288
Fax325-387-5245

Still needed

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

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

The Judges

The 112th District Court is administered from Ozona (Crockett County). Sutton County also posts a list of five visiting or assigned judges for 2025 — Dick Alcala, Eugenia "Genie" Wright, James Rausch, Pamala Talley, and Assistant District Attorney Gene Stump — each as a separate PDF under /upload/page/7325/2025/.

County Judge

Joseph Harris

District Court (112th Judicial District)

Pedro Gomez, Jr.

Justice of the Peace

Tammy Jo Liska

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

Budget check verified: the FY2025-2026 Adopted Budget is machine-readable and carries "DEPT NO: 512 / JAIL" as a standalone department alongside the Sheriff.
Contracts scored 'no' even though the county clearly holds prisoners for other agencies: the budget books "SHERIFF/ OTHER COUNTIES" and "OTHER COUNTIES-SHERIFF REIMBUS" as revenue and expense lines, but no contract and no per-day rate is published anywhere on the county site.
The Commissioners' Court publishes minutes at a bare IP address, http://72.12.122.197/minutes, rather than a named county domain. Agendas are posted as individual PDFs under /upload/page/7314/.
The Sheriff page's only custody link is VINELink. There is no jail page, no visitation page and no bond page.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Lee C. Bloodworth, Precinct 2 Bob Brockman, Precinct 3 David Blesing, Precinct 4 Harold Martinez; County Judge Joseph Harris. Court meets the 2nd and 4th Monday of the month at the Sutton County Annex Building, 300 East Oak Street.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

No death in the Sutton 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, 2026-0811 in 28 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them90.9%

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 Sutton 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