The Detention Center
Washington County Jail
- Operated byWashington County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes a jail nameYes - published as the 'Washington County Jail' on the Detention Center page
- Beds176
- Scope'It is the only jail in Washington County and therefore serves all law enforcement within the county'
- Operating hours24 hours a day, 365 days a year
- CommissaryAll deposits online at connectnetwork.com; no cash handled at the jail
- Beds and population, 2026-08106 people held in 177 rated beds
Source: Washington County Sheriff's Office - Detention Center · checked 2026-08-22
Transparency rating
5/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds176
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Trey Holleway
- Chief DeputyJay Petrash
- Chief of CorrectionsClifton Bellard (published on the county sheriff site as 'Chief of Correcitons')
- Agency sitewashingtoncosheriff.org, linked from the county website as the official WCSO site
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Washington County Texas Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
The Precinct 1 page states plainly that Judge Zwiener 'serves as a Magistrate at the Washington County Jail and is the President of the Washington County Bail Bond Board' - an unusually direct statement of the magistrate role. The Precinct 2 court runs its own separate site at washingtoncountyjp2.com.
County Judge
- John Durrenberger
County Court at Law
- Eric Berg
District Courts
- Carson Campbell (21st District Court)
- John Winkelmann (335th District Court)
Justices of the Peace
- Judge Douglas Zwiener (Precinct 1)
- Judge Douglas F. Cone (Precinct 2)
- Judge Duane "Dane" Houston (Precinct 3)
- Judge Harold C. Riddle (Precinct 4)
- 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
- Washington County is the strongest performer in this group: it names the jail, publishes a bed count, runs a live roster, publishes budgets and publishes a licensed bail bond company list plus a Bail Bond Board page.
- Capacity counted as yes on the published 176-bed figure. Daily population is not published, so this is a partial pass on a check that asks for both.
- The county also publishes a signed 2026 Sheriff and Constable Fees schedule (https://www.co.washington.tx.us/upload/page/0847/2026/SIGNED - 2026 Sheriffs Constable Fees.pdf). Those are civil process fees charged by the sheriff, not jail phone, video visit or commissary rates, so 'fees' remains 'no'.
- The Detention Center page correctly notes that Texas jails are inspected annually by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, but publishes no inspection result, so 'inspections' is 'no'.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Court normally meets every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. in Room 103 of the courthouse.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
5 people have died in the Washington County jail since 2016.
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 Washington 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