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

The Detention Center

Yoakum County Law Enforcement Center

Operated byYoakum County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameYes — the Sheriff's page heads the facility 'Yoakum County Law Enforcement Center'
Jail address1405 ST HWY 214, Plains, TX 79355
Jail phone806-456-2377
VisitationTuesdays and Saturdays; female inmates 10-11 am, male inmates 1-4 pm; one 20-minute visit per inmate per day
Visitation portalhttps://vl-yoakumctytx.tarmactech.com
Inmate phone/commissary vendorCity Tele Coin (https://www.citytelecoin.com/) — no rates published on the county site
Custody lookupCounty site refers the public to VINELink, a third-party/state service, not a county roster
What was triedhttps://www.yoakumcounty.gov/ ; https://www.yoakumcounty.gov/page/sitemap ; https://www.yoakumcounty.gov/page/Sheriff — the sitemap has no dedicated jail page
Beds and population, 2026-0817 people held in 48 rated beds

Source: Yoakum County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22

Transparency rating

2/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✗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 Yoakum 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 Robert Whitfield

OfficeYoakum County Sheriff's Office
Address1405 ST HWY 214, Plains, TX 79355 (P.O. Box 189)
Phone806-456-2377 (24 hour)
Fax806-456-5431

Still needed

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

Source: Yoakum County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22

The Judges

The county site lists no County Court at Law. The Justice of the Peace pages describe only civil, traffic and wedding functions; they do not mention magistrate or bond-setting duties.

County Judge

Michael C. Ybarra

121st District Court

John A. Didway

Justices of the Peace

Heather Lazos — Precinct 1
Troy Scott — 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

The FY2026 adopted budget was opened and does itemise detention separately: 'TOTAL COUNTY SHERIFF ... 1,389,414.00' and 'TOTAL JAIL ... 1,633,199.76' (https://www.yoakumcounty.gov/upload/page/0071/fy2026_adopted_budget.pdf).
co.yoakum.tx.us now 302-redirects to yoakumcounty.gov; the .gov domain is the live official site.
No county-specific TCJS inspection report could be located. TCJS publishes no per-county inspection index: /inspection-reports/ returns 404, and /reports/, /public-information/ and /non-compliant-jails/ carry only statewide documents. Yoakum is not on the current TCJS non-compliant list.
Commissary and inmate telephone service is vendor-run (City Tele Coin) but no rate schedule is published by the county.
Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 Woodson W. Lindsey, Precinct 2 Ray Marion, Precinct 3 Tommy Box, Precinct 4 Tim Addison. Regular meetings Monday mornings at 10:00 a.m.
County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats

The record

No death in the Yoakum 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, 2026-0817 in 48 beds

Share not convicted of the charge holding them76.5%

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 Yoakum 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