Tarrant County paid Recana Recruiting and Staffing Solutions roughly $2.3 million between January and June to help staff its understaffed jail, then ended the contract early anyway, and county leaders still have not publicly explained the full reason behind the decision. The company was formally terminated on June 14, after commissioners voted in May to end the two-year deal well ahead of schedule.
The final price tag came in nearly double the roughly $1.2 million estimate floated in May, according to the Fort Worth Report. Tarrant County Commissioners approved the original two-year contract with Recana in October 2025 in a 3-2 vote, with Republican members backing the deal while Democratic Commissioners Alisa Simmons and Roderick Miles Jr. voted against it, according to KERA News.
A Deal Built on Vacancies and Overtime
Tarrant County turned to private staffing after a March 2024 in-house recruitment campaign spent $37,500 but netted just three hired detention officers, per the same station’s reporting. At the beginning of the year, the jail had 202 vacancies; as of Tuesday, that figure stood at 92, according to the Fort Worth Report. Recana was required to help hire a minimum of 50 jailers under the contract but ultimately hired 34, with staffing services costing the county between $7,000 and $15,000 per recruited, trained and equipped jailer.
When commissioners first approved the contract, public agenda documents did not include an official contract text or a specified total price, with county administration saying it would be funded through savings from vacant positions and reduced overtime, per the same account. Recana, which had no prior experience managing recruitment for a county sheriff’s office, covered new recruits’ relocation expenses for their first 30 days under its staffing model. Before landing in Tarrant County, the company had secured a $1.2 million jail staffing contract with Liberty County, Texas, in 2024 and provided private detention facility management for the state’s Operation Lone Star border program, according to The Texas Observer.
Certification Questions and a Closed-Session Dispute
Commissioner Alisa Simmons, who voted against the contract when it was proposed, said Recana failed the county by sending jailers who were not certified by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, a licensing requirement mandated by state law for county detention officers. She requested a briefing about Recana during a commissioners court meeting and questioned what measurable benefits the county gained from the arrangement…