The Detention Center
The county publishes no formal name for this facility.
- Operated byWard County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes a jail nameNo - the sheriff page carries an address, a phone number and two outbound links (MissingKids.com and VINELink.com) and says nothing about a jail
- Jail addressNot found on the county site
- Jail phoneNot found on the county site
- Jail-related links on county siteNone whatsoever - a site-wide link scan for 'jail', 'inmate' and 'bond' returned nothing
- What was triedhttps://www.co.ward.tx.us/page/ward.Sheriff ; https://www.co.ward.tx.us/ ; https://www.co.ward.tx.us/page/ward.Financial.Budgets ; https://www.co.ward.tx.us/page/ward.Commissioners.Court
- Beds and population, 2026-0855 people held in 118 rated beds
Source: Ward 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 Micheal Franco
- SpellingPublished by the county as 'Micheal Franco'
- Office address415 E. Monahans Parkway, Monahans, TX 79756
- Phone432-943-6703
- Fax432-251-0912
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Ward County Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
Ward County has no County Court at Law. Its four JP precincts are consolidated into two benches - Precincts 1 & 4 under one judge and Precincts 2 & 3 under another. The 143rd Judicial District covers Loving, Reeves and Ward Counties.
County Judge
- Greg M. Holly
District Court (143rd Judicial District)
- Alan Nicholas
Justices of the Peace
- Judge Danny R. Bustos (Precincts 1 & 4)
- Judge Roy Bean (Precincts 2 & 3)
- 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
- Ward County publishes less about its jail than any other county in this group. The county website contains no jail page, no facility name, no roster, no bond guidance and no fees - the word 'jail' does not appear as a link anywhere on the site.
- The sheriff page's only public-facing resources are two outbound links to MissingKids.com and VINELink.com, both of them state or national services rather than county records.
- Budget counted as yes: the county publishes budgets under Financial Transparency. No separate sheriff or detention budget is broken out.
- The county does publish Commissioners' Court meeting minutes, which is more than several larger counties in this group manage.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
1 people have died in the Ward County jail since 2024.
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 Ward 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