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

The Detention Center

Wilbarger County Jail

Operated byWilbarger County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameYes - the Sheriff page heads a separate block 'Wilbarger County Jail'
Jail address5215 College Drive, Vernon, TX 76384
Jail phone(940) 553-1351
Jail rosterA dated PDF roster is linked from the Sheriff page; the copy checked was 8-21-26.pdf, dated the day before this research
Bonding'Bonding Rules & Applications' PDF: https://www.co.wilbarger.tx.us/upload/page/0081/docs/bonding application.pdf
Inmate commissary / phoneThe county links City Tele Coin (https://citytelecoin.com/) but publishes no rates
What was triedhttps://www.co.wilbarger.tx.us/page/wilbarger.sheriff ; https://www.co.wilbarger.tx.us/page/Budgets ; https://www.co.wilbarger.tx.us/page/PublicNotices - there is no separate jail page, the Sheriff page carries everything
Beds and population, 2026-0833 people held in 49 rated beds

Source: Wilbarger County - Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-22

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✓Who is in custody
✗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
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Wilbarger 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 Brian Fritze

OfficeWilbarger County Sheriff's Office
Mailing addressP.O. Box 1556, Vernon, TX 76385
Phone(940) 552-6205
Fax(940) 553-2318
History noteThe county publishes that the department has been active since 1881 and has had 23 sheriffs

Still needed

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

Source: Wilbarger County - Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-22

The Judges

The county site lists no County Court at Law. The 46th District Court serves Wilbarger, Hardeman and Foard Counties. Neither JP page mentions magistrate or bond-setting duties.

County Judge

Greg Tyra

46th Judicial District Court

Cornell Curtis

Justices of the Peace

Judge Larry Lee - Precinct 1
Judge Clinton Nava - Precinct 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

Wilbarger publishes more jail material on one Sheriff page than most counties this size: a dated jail roster PDF, bonding rules and an application, and the commissary/phone vendor.
The roster is a static PDF replaced periodically rather than a live list, and it is linked without an index, so older copies are not reachable.
No rates are published for phone calls, video visits or commissary - only the City Tele Coin link.
Commissioners Court items appear on the Public Notices Calendar under a 'CC Meeting' category; there is no separate minutes archive.
No county-specific Texas Commission on Jail Standards inspection report URL could be located.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Billy Taylor, Precinct 2 Phillip Graf, Precinct 3 Caul Craighead, Precinct 4 Josh Patterson. The court meets the 2nd and 4th Monday of the month at 9:00 AM in the County Commissioner Court Room.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

No death in the Wilbarger 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, 2026-0833 in 49 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them51.5%

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 Wilbarger 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